Highlights from the Somali Heritage Week 2018 Event report It is becoming clear that in order to build communities that are successful at improving conditions and resolving problems, we need to understand and appreciate different cultures, establish relationships with people from cultures other than our own, and build strong alliances with different cultural groups.
Celebrating Whispers 15 Years On: How Satire Can Further Civic Discourse This year, 2018, marks 15 years since the death of Wahome Mutahi (1954 – 2003), who was one of Kenya’s most prolific fiction writers, as well as a playwright, columnist, political satirist, pundit and public opinion leader. He was popularly known as Whispers after the name of the column he wrote for The Daily Nation from 1982 to 2003, offering a satirical view of the trials and tribulations of Kenyan life. According to George Ogola in The Idiom of Age in a Popular Kenyan Newspaper Serial, at a time when the state had all but monopolized public sites of expression in the country, Whispers kept the Kenyan popular media porous, opening up spaces for the discussion of social and political issues that could otherwise only be ‘whispered’. It became the most visible site of social, cultural and political expression for the last two decades at a time when freedom to such expression was highly constrained by the state.
RE-IMAGINING NAIROBI: Better Planning for the City According to Re-Imagining Nairobi, a striking part of the discourse around issue based politics in Kenya and the future of Kenya is the lack of room to imagine. We are often mired in the “what is” and the “this is Kenya” conversations, allowing room for marginal improvements at best and cynicism at worst. But what if we expanded the space for imagination, to accommodate possibilities to imagine for instance a Nairobi where public spaces are important and designed to work for the intended users both aesthetically and functionally? Spaces where fundamentals for urban spaces like footpaths and organized traffic flow are prioritized in development planning. Re-Imagining Nairobi is serializing conversations intended to open discussions to include...what Nairobi could be. The very first conversation in the series is focused on addressing Nairobi’s congestion problem.
Anti-Coal Demonstrators in Kenya March to Deliver Demands to Parliament and the President Article In commemorating World Environment Day on 5th June 2018, anti-coal activists across Kenya including from Lamu and Kitui held the #CoalNiSumu (Coal is Poison) demonstration in Nairobi, Kenya. About 250 people participated in the peaceful march through the Central Business District. Image credits It was the first anti-coal demonstration in Nairobi, but just the latest action by the deCOALonize movement (www.decoalonize.org). Listen to the latest Podcast (http://www.otherwisepodcast.com/episodes/episode-55-decoalonize/) This Nairobi event follows a peaceful anti-coal demonstration in Lamu two weeks ago, in which two activists were arrested for public assembly and face possible charges.
Female Genital Mutilation and The Dilemma of Consent Image credits Every year approximately 3 million girls undergo female genital mutilation globally according to the statistics by the World Health Organization (WHO). What this essentially means is that parents of more than three million girls allow their daughters to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in order to conform to social traditions. Individual families who opt not to have their daughters undergo FGM, risk stigmatization and social exclusion, particularly in communities where the practice is rampant. Globally, it is estimated that around 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some sort of Female Genital Mutilation.
Extra-Judicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances in Kenya: Balancing the Respect for Human Rights and Maintaining National Security The Annual All Kenyan Moot Court Competition was held on the 23rd and 24th March 2018 at the Kenyatta University School of Law, supported by the Heinrich Boell Foundation with 200 students participating from 12 different universities across the country. This year’s theme was: “Striking the Balance between Respect for Human Rights and Maintaining National Security.” While Kenya signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), it has not ratified the Convention, and consequently the existing legal framework falls short of international human right standards, and is thus unable to comprehensively deal with the problem
Kenya Appeal Court Rules to End Forced Examinations of Men Suspected of Being Gay Image credits On Thursday 22nd March 2018, a three judge bench handed down a ruling in a case appealing the state’s cruel and degrading treatment of two Kenyan men while under arrest in 2015. The men were arrested in Kwale County, on assertion that they were gay.
Kenya: Short Film “Watu Wote” Nominated for the Oscars After “Watu Wote” scooped the Students Oscars in September 2017 and numerous International Festival Awards, today’s Oscars Jury pronouncement further warrants this Film project the publicity it deserves not only in the East and Horn of Africa region but the world over. The film, based on a true story, narrates the experience of a group of bus travelers who on 21st December 2015 in Mandera (Kenyan-Somali border region) were attacked by Al-Shabaab terrorists. Like in so many incidences before, the militia had planned to massacre all the over 30 Christians on board the bus.
Public Dialogue on Quality of Maternal Health Care in Kenya: A conversation on leaving no woman behind “I have the privilege of enjoying both private and public health insurance popularly known as National Insurance Health Fund (NHIF), majority here may not have similar options”, this was the moderator’s opening statement. But what does this mean for pregnant women and girls in Kenya?
The Big Bad Fix – The Case Against Climate Geoengineering The “Big Bad Fix” provides policy makers, journalists, NGO activists, social movements, and other change agents with a comprehensive overview of the key actors, technologies and fora relevant in the geoengineering discourse. It delivers a sound background analysis of the history of geoengineering, the various vested interests shaping it, and case studies on some of the most important technologies and experiments.
