On Wednesday, April 24th, 2024, the Missing Voices Coalition launched its 2023 Annual Report focused on the theme "End Police Impunity" at the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Nairobi Office.
This marks the fourth report and a significant achievement for the Coalition since its inception. The report highlighted several key developments related to discussions on police impunity in the country for the year 2023. One major highlight was the reduction in extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances compared to the previous year. The report detailed a 9.2% decrease in extrajudicial killings, from 130 in 2022 to 118 in 2023, and a 54.5% decrease in enforced disappearances, from 22 in 2022 to 10 in 2023.
The 2022 report was launched on Friday 24th March 2023 , held in Yala, marked the launch of the Accountability report, shedding light on the Statistics and Trends of Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances in the country. The launch included a panel discussion by partners and keynote addresses by distinguished guests that include Ambassadors from Germany, Britain, the United States, and the European Union.
This paper seeks to explore the topographies of abandonment and pandemic policing in Kenya’s urban-informal settlements. Through a connection of spatial territories1, I explore the continuation of the colonial era divide and rule tactics to govern what seems as Kenya’s fragmented regions through the duration of the government COVID-19 combatting mechanisms. Through ethnographic research, this paper tries to connect the struggles of Kenya’s poor urban populations secluded in ‘slum areas’ on their daily quest for survival by engaging in a fight against a pandemic and state violence. Notwithstanding the daily denials of basic needs and priorities by both government and potential de facto urban management.
Kabarak University and Heinrich Boell Foundation published a book dubbed “Decentralisation and inclusion in Kenya: From pre-colonial times to the first decade of devolution”. The publication is a result of a research that evaluated the first era of devolution (2012 – 2022). The critical focus on devolution and its impact on minority groups.
Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses From My Mouth includes 159 poems written in 2019 and 2020 from Luzira Women’s Prison in Kampala, Uganda during a trial and serving time for cyber-harassing and offending the President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in a poem where she uses his dead mother’s vagina as an image to comment on her son’s "oppression, suppression and repression" of Ugandans. This poetry collection includes poems "written by an activist who uses the space of incarceration and the time of detention to reflect on the conditions of being incarcerated itself", the position of the woman in society, and the political conditions of the Ugandan state.
This publication not only highlight regression in the various thematic spaces; reproductive health, religion, media, social and political movements as well as the state of constitutionalism, but also recommend interventions and concepts that can gear states towards an inclusive democracy.
The report “Toxic Business; Highly Hazardous Pesticides in Kenya” presents analyses on actual data of pesticides used in 2020 in Kenya. It shows that immediate action is necessary to protect human health, the environment, and the right to healthy food in Kenya.
The Route to Food Initiative, a program component of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, has launched a special edition of the Chakula Magazine, a graphic novel entitled “The Blind Spot.”
The Blind Spot brings to life the ways in which politics plays out in Kenya’s food system in the form of a visually compelling political drama set in a fictional future county called Kajibora. The main protagonist, Sifa, is a passionate young professor from the city who travels back to her hometown of Kajibora after the death of her grandfather, a renowned politician and leader of a famous peasant revolution. Upon her return, Sifa discovers that the post-revolutionary county is being taken over by a multinational industrial agribusiness company.
The Route to Food Initiative (RTFI) sought to assess the current situation in regard to the perception of Kenyans about GMOs. RTFI, contracted a research firm, Infotrak Research and Consulting to undertake the research. Over 8000 respondents from all counties in Kenya were contacted for this survey. Quantitative data was collected through Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI), targeting the Kenyan adult population across all the regions. The data was then systematically analysed. Key issues of focus included level of awareness, willingness to consume and grow GMOs, and access to information on GMOs. These variables were analysed against various demographic aspects of the respondents.
Chemicals in products have continued to expose humans and the environment to their negative impacts. Evidence from analysis of recycled plastic products sampled from markets in Kenya and other parts of the world has revealed high levels of POPs in recycled products including children’s toys.
This is exacerbated by weaknesses in the legal frameworks, the limited capacity of countries to screen imports for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and lack of transparency and traceability mechanisms for chemicals in products. To reduce exposure to these chemicals in Kenya, there is need to regulate the use of plastic products treated with chemicals and set stringent limits for POPs in products and wastes. Furthermore, there is need to strengthen the capacity to manage chemicals in products including capacity for screen of imports.
Lastly, the government should take lead in pushing for adequate measures to eliminate toxics in plastics in the ongoing plastic treaty negotiations to support non- toxic circular economy. This policy brief is intended for policy and decision makers in the national and county governments, particularly in the ministries of health, environment, labor and trade, as well as regulatory agencies such as the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) and the Kenya Bureau of Standards.
Large-scale renewable energy projects are being developed in the drylands of Africa, Asia and Latina America without adequate consultation with pastoralists that have been using the land for grazing their livestock since time memorial. This report examines evidence from existing large-scale projects. It argues that an inclusive participatory design of such projects is necessary to safeguard human rights and ensure mutual benefit for pastoralist communities and society at large.