By Harrison  Mwirigi  Ikunda, Nairobi

One vital input I get free on my daily work as I criss-cross the country and the region lately is a lot of free information from the common man and also from the high of the society  who are in business, politics , non governmental organisations,  pursuing careers, and foreigners as well. I can tell with certainty that very many people are quite knowledgeable of what is going on in the country and the region.  For instance Kenya is  on the threshold of another critical presidential transition  and I can vouch that a good number of people are quite focused on events between now  and then.

To put the 2012 transition poll in perspective  revisiting the past would be in order. In 2002 there was quite an apprehension on the transition from the long serving  and now retired president Daniel Arap Moi. After the long reign and KANU’s stranglehold on power few believed Moi would hand over power especially in a continent where leaders  are quite notorious on their lifelong hold onto  power. I do think Moi made a surprise when he peacefully handed over and true to his word went to his home  and still in Kenya. This should be the same expectation on president Kibaki.

Methinks Kibaki has had his share of success and failures like any human being and the transition to retirement shouldn’t be scary. The rapid positive changes in the economy, infrastructural developments and  the passage of the new constitution are pillars to his legacy. Nonetheless Kibaki has a lot of unfinished business  such as the full implementation of the constitution with passage of requisite laws through the legislature is still pending. This is what his focus should be on.  The person who should inherit his mantle  and hence his successor  should be  of lesser concern. The critical cog should be adequate measures and systems should be in place to ensure a smooth transition through a free and fair election. The rest is quite subsidiary or even un-necessary for him to secure a honourable legacy.

Kibaki has nothing to loose in his succession provided   he ensures an organised  and peaceful transition. The noise and circus propagated by some of his lieutenants and close allies don’t matter as what is critical to him and his legacy is a peaceful united nation.  Obviously Kenya is still a troubled nation but he cant hope to cure all the ills that quickly and therefore he would rather complete his term on a high note and the future will take care of itself through better systems and leadership. Crucial to him is to leave a united nation.

Critically also   we would rather have an earlier election as provided by the new constitution. What Kenyan Mps are forgetting is that most of Kenyans are just tired of their incessant circus of parochial politics. The earlier  the Mps  leave the better for the nation. What t the Mps  forget is that the behaviour of some of them is just making the Kenyan nation look quite shoddy. It does not matter even if we will  have another bunch  of  cheerleaders as Kenya is adept to . Sometimes people get the leaders they deserve and that there are challenges in leadership in Kenya is a symptom of a  society dubiously in self denial.

Nonetheless, as is often the case  during elections, majority of the Mps loose their seats. And the forthcoming election will not be any different.  As a country it is better for them to leave  to  face another election sooner and this  would be appropriately in August next year. It doesn’t matter the cost to the tax payers its must better to have this lot leave, we set in to a new political dispensation which is inevitable with the realisation of the new constitution.

There are a few spectacular leaders among the political class. The only big challenge is that the polluted political environment, tribalism and corruption hinder progress of some of the progressive leaders in politics and others who would be in politics to help the dear nation. What has continuously happened is the deep rot in our society continues to render rudderless leaders some of whom are professional tribalists and corruption captains.

But may it as it is the bottom-line is that the tide for repaid changes is on. Nobody thought that the Arabs would rise against their oppressive regimes . Now the force of change sweeping across the Arab world is un-stoppable. Similarly Kenya is gradually changing and the monstrosity of con politics and leaders taking the population for a ride will cease. Kindly lets have the next poll in August 2012. It would be a beginning of tidying the political room.

The writer is a Consultant and a Researcher working for a Not for Profit Organisation in Kenya.

By Harrison  Mwirigi  Ikunda, Nairobi

The more things change in Kenya the more they remain the same. This is not in exactly the same or entire spectrum but in the sense of political culture and behaviour. Right now all in the political scene seem to revolve around political succession. It is not surprising in all this circus there is also a lot of muddling on the Prime Minister Raila’s name.

The unfortunate thing about Africa and for this particular Kenya tribalism is a deadly venom that always and inevitably messes on  progress. In Kenya the obsession with tribe is just extreme. That is why in many private discussions on politics in Kenya whether in public places or in private homes the issue about the next ruler revolves around tribes.

It is however not without cause. The British colonialists for their own survival and to entrench their brutal rule set tribes against one another and promoted divisiveness which spewed into post independence leadership. Upon independence the Kenyatta government practiced tribalism with extreme value and during the Moi reign this culture was still given a lot of impetus. The Kibaki reign has had similar problems in balancing tribal interests. In a sense there is a problem with Kenya in managing tribal interests.

I would not entirely blame the post independence rulers for the culture of tribalism. Their manner of handling their tribe’s interests is just a symptom of an extremely divided society. Tribalism is practiced everywhere by many diverse people, groups and leaders in all spheres of Kenyan society. Tribalism is the pot in which leadership, opportunities and allocation of resources or the cake is brewed. It is part and parcel of Kenyans lives. Jut review everywhere including military, private enterprises, government organizations, non governmental sectors and you will find tribalism is real and almost an incurable disease in Kenya.

Without pretence the leaders who will be seeking to succeed Kibaki after next year’s polls will necessarily have to appeal to their own tribes and then reach out for other tribes in coalitions or in certain groupings. In effect the tribal business in politics will be heightened between now, the next elections and the incorporation of the next government.

Tribalism is a great tragedy for Kenya and it will remain a big problem for quite some time to the future. Incidentally the problem is not entirely to do with the leaders but its part of the nation’s culture and part of the big problem bedeviling the entire African continent. Communities want to prop their sons and daughters not just to serve them but to grab something for them in exclusion of others. This is what fuels tribal competition.

It is also not helped by the character of post independence presidency in Kenya. The seat has been very powerful and those in presidency and close associates have benefited immensely. Moreover the exclusion in sharing of vital resources or whatever is called the cake has largely favoured those closely politically related to the seat of power. This is what has made the presidential seat look deity in nature. The political culture in has had the perfection and  practice on exclusivity which has made tribes attempt to position their own to garner the very important seat in the political hierarchy.

These coupled with run-away corruption and the sea of poverty engulfing the nation has meant that there is always heightened race for grabbing the pivotal positions in the country. At any rate most of the propertied class have had or have close proximity to power.

However times are bound to change with devolutions occurring and the new dispensation bestowed by the new consultation. There is still some challenge considering there is also likelihood of bad habits also getting devolved to county governments. These are the ills of corruption and sectarian divisiveness such as in clans or even tribes. The divisiveness of the Africans and Kenyans for this matter is what has been an harbinger for chaos, poverty and hatred.

Some of the vitriol being poured in the political arena is quite disheartening.  Cleverly hidden tribal innuendos and connotations are being marketed just in the name of political competition. The day Kenyans will realize how their nation wasted very vital period in time after independence while blindly following leaders, is the day they will change their cause. For now the country continues bedeviled in tribalism and corruption which begets so many other innumerable ills that dog it. For Kenya some things change but remain the same.

The writer is a Consultant and a Reseacher working for a Not for Profit Organisation in Kenya.

SOUTH AFRICA: New laws mean new hurdles for asylum seekers

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

Asylum seekers often queue for days at refugee centres

JOHANNESBURG, 25 March 2011 (IRIN) – Controversial amendments to South Africa’s immigration laws may raise new barriers for large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers who come to the country in search of a better life.

The Immigration Amendment Bill was passed by the National Assembly on 22 March, despite arguments from opposition parties and civil society groups that it could lead to genuine asylum seekers being rendered illegal and facing up to four years in jail.

Asylum seekers currently have 14 days after entering the country to go to a refugee reception centre and make a formal application for asylum. The amended bill, which only needs approval by the National Council of Provinces to become law, reduces this period to five days.

Roni Amit, a senior researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, pointed out that even 14 days was often not enough time for people to reach a refugee centre, of which there only seven in the country.

“A lot of times, crossing the border can be very traumatic – people are often attacked or detained; it takes them a while to figure out what they need to do and where they need to go. They might also not have money for transport,” she told IRIN.

Jacob van Garderen, National Director of Lawyers for Human Rights, noted that “sometimes it takes [asylum seekers] days to get through queues just to reach the front door of [a refugee centre].”

An additional amendment will require officials at border posts to make an initial assessment of whether an individual is eligible to apply for asylum. Amit said it was unclear what this pre-screening process would consist of, but it was “very problematic that it would be done by immigration officials with no training in asylum law.”

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also raised concerns about the new legislation, but spokesperson Tina Ghelli said they had taken note of assurances given by Home Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma when addressing Parliament that the pre-screening process would consist only of a criminal background check, and that no one would be penalized for failing to apply for asylum within five days if the delay was the fault of the Home Affairs Department.

Asylum seekers in limbo

South Africa gets the largest number of asylum applications in the world, with over 200,000 received in 2009 alone, according to UNHCR. A backlog of applications, estimated at 400,000 by Braam Hanekom of People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), a Cape Town-based NGO, means that individuals often wait up to four years for a decision on their refugee status.

During the long wait, asylum seekers have the right to work and access basic social services, a policy that Ghelli described as generous compared to other countries in the region, where asylum seekers are often confined to camps.

However, high levels of unemployment and widespread xenophobia mean asylum seekers often have difficulty finding jobs and making use of public services.

Most of the backlog is made up of applications from Zimbabweans fleeing their country’s economic and political crises. In April 2009 the South African government announced a moratorium on deporting undocumented Zimbabwean migrants and began issuing 90-day visas to them, but in September 2010 they were given until the end of that year to apply for work, business or study permits, or face deportation once more.

Home Affairs extended the moratorium until 1 August 2011 to allow the Zimbabwean authorities more time to meet the demand for passports and other documents required to process applications. Nevertheless, Wits University’s Amit was sceptical that all 275,000 applications would be processed in time.

Research by Amit and her colleagues showed that the brief period allocated to the process and poor communication about what was required meant that many Zimbabweans were excluded.

“A lot of them didn’t have passports and couldn’t get them, and didn’t know that that requirement had been relaxed in the last two weeks,” she told IRIN.

PASSOP’s Hanekom said amendments to the Immigration Act imposing harsher penalties for people found guilty of violating immigration laws would encourage many more migrants “to go underground”.

Previously, the legislation stipulated a maximum penalty of nine months in jail for illegal immigrants who failed to leave the country when ordered to do so, whereas the amended act prescribes a jail term of two to four years.

Hanekom said much would depend on how the new legislation was interpreted on the ground. “For asylum seekers and for immigrants, it paves the path towards the country being able to deport very large numbers, but it’ll depend on political decisions and implementation.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org

MYANMAR-THAILAND: Thai border camp population constant despite third country resettlement

Photo: Chandler Vandergrift/IRIN

Burmese woman and child at a refugee centre in the Thai border town of Mae Sot in early November 2010

BANGKOK, 25 March 2011 (IRIN) – The population of the nine refugee camps along the Myanmar-Thai border in Thailand, which have been in existence for more than 20 years, is relatively stable, despite 11,086 refugees being resettled in third countries over the past year, according to the Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an umbrella group of NGOs working along the border.

The number of those being resettled is more or less matched by births in the camps and new refugees, said the latest TBBC report covering July-December 2010, which put the camp population at 141,076, including 57,915 unregistered people.

Since 2005, over 58,000 refugees have been resettled in third countries. “Resettlement features prominently in UNHCR’s [the UN Refugee Agency’s] strategic plan for assisting Myanmar refugees in Thailand,” says UNHCR.

“Many Burmese asylum-seekers would prefer to stay [in the camps] if they were allowed to earn a livelihood, settle in, and live peacefully. They seek resettlement reluctantly because they cannot stay safely. They are vulnerable to arbitrary detention, and lack freedom of movement and educational opportunities,” said Stothard.

Some 10,000 new asylum-seekers have arrived in the camps since the November 2010 elections in Myanmar, according to TBBC.

The camps promise a safe haven for asylum-seekers fleeing fighting and violence in Myanmar. But they have become cramped, jobs are few, and donors and NGOs have now decided to switch some of their funding away from humanitarian to development projects.

People being warehoused the way they are now is untenable

“We are providing the same funding on humanitarian assistance, but making a gradual shift from humanitarian assistance to more developmental projects,” said Mathias Eick, regional information officer with the European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO).

ECHO is re-prioritizing aid to the camps and “seeking more durable solutions instead of just continuing humanitarian aid, because it is not a temporary situation,” he said.

This year ECHO plans to allocate eight million euros ($11,240,000) to humanitarian assistance, and four million ($5,620,000) to pilot projects for agricultural development and vocational training, including hairdressing, weaving and computer technology.

Enhancing self-reliance

While the programmes aim to enhance self-reliance, they are not yet cost-effective. “The livelihoods projects are currently income-saving rather than generation,” said Sally Thompson, deputy executive director of the Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an umbrella group of NGOs working along the border.

“The reality is that refugees have been in Thailand for over five decades… We should be working towards long-term solutions to address push factors and to find a way for them to stay that is effective for both the Thai community and the people,” said Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Bangkok-based rights advocacy NGO Altsean-Burma.

“People being warehoused the way they are now is untenable,” she said.

It is a question of human dignity because people deserve to have knowledge, skills and opportunities to be economically empowered. If they resettle or integrate into a society in the future, they will need to have skills to support themselves, Eick said.

“When Burma enters transition, the people in the camps will be resources to kick-start community development,” Stothard added.

“The courses are so popular, especially among the young generation, that they have to rotate to give more people the opportunity,” Eick said.

EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva met Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya on 14 March to discuss “the Thai government’s active work on improving refugees’ access to education, justice and economic activities”. She stressed the importance of “moving from hand-out relief to sustainable livelihood solutions for the refugees”.

With continuing rights abuses by the military regime against ethnic civilians, return to Myanmar in the foreseeable future is highly unlikely for the refugees.

Since 1995 ECHO has provided over 103 million euros (US$144,715,000) in humanitarian assistance to the camps in the form of rations, medical aid, water and sanitation. The European Union (ECHO and individual states) provides more than half of all humanitarian and development aid to the camps.

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source http://www.irinnews.org

PAKISTAN: Militancy, floods, “negligence” hit fight against polio

Photo: Zofeen Ebrahim/IRIN

Rising infection rates hard to swallow

PESHAWAR, 25 March 2011 (IRIN) – Pakistan had looked to be winning its battle against polio until 2007 when 32 new cases were detected. Since then, things have deteriorated, with the president declaring a national emergency in January 2011, and describing the failure to eradicate the disease as “criminal negligence”.

The discovery of the polio virus in water samples obtained from five cities in February is believed to be just one of the reasons why the disease is spreading so rapidly in the country.

Pakistan had more polio infections in 2010 (144 cases confirmed) than any other country. Fifteen new cases have been recorded this year.

Whether or not negligence is involved is debatable. But there are many dimensions to what is a complex problem; lack of access for polio vaccination teams to certain areas of the country due to the activities of armed militant groups is one key factor.

According to media reports earlier this year, a worker for Pakistan’s Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI) was kidnapped and later killed in the North Waziristan tribal agency on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

“The militants, and other orthodox elements, oppose vaccination for children. They say Allah alone decides about sickness or health and no one should interfere,” Jamila Bibi, a mother of three, told IRIN from the Khyber Agency, also along the western frontier. She said she and her husband had their children immunized “in secret” to avoid reprisals.

“Refusals”

EPI deputy director Janbaz Afridi in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa told IRIN that for the latest campaign earlier this month “more supervisors” had been put in place to oversee the activities of field staff, and that the issue of “refusals… was also being addressed”. “Refusals” refer to parents who decline their children to be vaccinated, usually on religious grounds.

The National Research and Development Foundation NGO is working on tackling this issue, and has said the services of 1,700 clerics, prayer leaders and religious scholars had been enlisted to help build opinion in favour of vaccination.

We are afraid of kidnappings or other violence. So many times children outside big urban centres do not get immunized at all

“We believe children should be vaccinated so they can grow up healthy and strong,” Muhammad Siddique, a prayer leader, told IRIN.

Other problems stem from the militancy issue. Due to security concerns in many tribal areas, female health workers in particular are reluctant to venture beyond main towns.

“We are afraid of kidnappings or other violence. So many times children outside big urban centres do not get immunized at all,” said a health worker who asked not to be named. She suggested villagers be trained to immunize children themselves.

Floods

Aziz Memon, chairman of the Pakistan Polio Plus Committee of Rotary International, told IRIN: “The problem of more cases in Pakistan really came up after the floods from July to September 2010. It was only after August that we had more cases reported from Sindh and the Punjab, mainly due to poor sanitation and unhygienic conditions from floodwater. Before then, new cases were being reported only from Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and Balochistan, mainly due to inaccessibility issues.”

He said Pakistan planned to use the new bivalent vaccine in future to tackle the different strains of polio simultaneously and that the vaccine had proved highly successful in India.

“We are determined to reach every child,” the EPI’s Afridi said. But given the scale of the problem, this is still a tall order and it is still not certain the plan launched by President Zardari to quickly eradicate polio will work.

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source http://www.irinnews.org