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Report from Kenya #208 – January 25, 2013

Report on AGLI’s Work to Prevent Election Violence in Kenya

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Dear Friend,

The African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams (USA) with our Kenyan partner, Friends Church Peace Teams (FCPT) is in the middle of an ambitious project to prevent renewed violence for the March 4 Kenyan election and the possible election run off on April 11. I am sending you this report for two reasons.

First I want you to be aware of this project and what we have accomplished to date and what we hope to do before election day. I ask you to forward this report to those who may be interested in the Kenyan election and/or the Quaker response to potential violence.

Second, when the post-election violence broke out in Kenya in 2008, AGLI had no resources to respond immediately. We found that it is crucial to implement our peace-making programs even though the violence has not subsided because early intervention is necessary to keep the violence from escalating.

This report includes three additional pages which indicate our progress to date. Page 2 covers the civic education seminars we have conducted to date. Page 3 is a report on the training of citizen reporters and the work of the Call-in Center we have established. Our citizen reporters have already sent us some alarming reports. Our program is more than just to collect information, but to respond to any violence or potential violence that is occurring. The last page of this report describes our responses to date, particularly to the escalating violence on Mt Elgon.

My fundraising goal for this report is $10,000. These funds will be needed to continue our seminars, the training of election observers, and most importantly to have funds on hand to respond immediately to any violence that erupts as I will want to focus on responding rather than seeking funds. We would appreciate any tax-deductible contribution you can make. You can also donate by sending a check to “Friends Peace Teams/AGLI, 1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104 or via credit card at www.friendspeaceteams.org. Mark you donation as “Kenyan election.”

Thanks so much,

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative
Friends Peace Teams

Civic Education

In August 2010, Kenyans overwhelmingly approved a new constitution. While there were many changes including enhanced rights for women, the biggest change was that the nine provinces were divided into forty-seven counties which will have control over local issues. This “devolved government” will be led by an elected governor and a county-wide legislature.

In order for citizens to understand these changes, by December 31, 2012, FCPT/AGLI had conducted 72 one-day seminars for 4,500 participants plus 13 unplanned seminars in churches and government meetings for about 1,500 people. The objective of these seminars is based on the philosophy that if people know and understand the political process and are willing to participate in it, they are less likely to resort to violence to redress their grievances.

The seminar covers four main topics: (1) the electoral process, (2) the leadership and integrity requirements according to the new constitution, (3) the Bill of Rights, and (4) the new devolved governmental system. The new constitution has divided up the nine former provinces into 47 counties. The boundaries of these new counties were drawn along ethnic and clan lines in many parts of the country, leading to minority groups with no possibility of winning electoral office with tribal based voting patterns. The government itself has determined that 27 of the 47 counties have potential for ethnic violence.

We have found that on the one hand citizens know very little about the new constitution, but on the other hand, they are eager to learn. Most of the seminars had between 40 and 80 participants. People did not want to end the seminar when it was time for the facilitators to return home. This was in spite of the fact that the only “lunch” they were served for the day-long seminar was a bottle of soda and half a small loaf of bread similar to Wonder Bread in the US.

Voter registration for the upcoming election was disappointing and well under the goal set by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). Eighteen million voters were expect to enroll, but only 14.3 million voters or 79% of the expected number enrolled. As can be seen below in the table, on Mt Elgon those locations where we did civic education seminars had 8.67% higher registration of voters than those where we did not conduct civic education seminars. This is one of the positive results of our work.

Table on Civic Education on Mt Elgon

FCPT/AGLI conducted civic education workshops in three of the six locations (smallest government unit in Kenya), but did not conduct them in remaining three.

Locations with civic education:

Location	Number of registered voters	Percentage registered
Chesikaki	7790	69
Cheptais	9145	68
Kapkateny	7962	67

 

Locations without civic education

Location	Number of registered voters	Percentage registered
Kaptama	9475	64
Elgon Central	9393	60
Chepyuk	7336	55

The average percentage of registered voters as a percentage of projected enrollment was 8.67% higher in those locations with civic education than those without. Our program was effective.

In February when the candidates for all positions will be known and the ballots in the process of printing, FCPT/AGLI plans on at least 80 more seminars to inform people on who is on the ballot and how they should cast their votes. Not only are there lots of new young voters in the last five years, but when voting only occurs once in every five years, people forget how the process works. The goal is to encourage those who have registered to actually vote on election day.

For the presidential election, the winner must secure 50% of the vote plus one on the first ballot in order to win. If this does not happen there will be a run-off election on April 11. If a run-off occurs, there is the likelihood of significant fraud and violence. We will again conduct seminars to educate the voters on the situation. Part of the content of the seminar will be to promote a peaceful, non-violent election with no post election violence, meaning that the losers must accept their loss. This will occur only if people feel that the election was conducted accurately and fairly.

If violence or potential violence occurs after either of the elections, FCPT/AGLI will be ready to lead listening sessions for those involved in the violence, including all sides in any conflict. If possible we will even bring the various sides together so that they can talk to each other, rather than react with revenge violence.

Citizen Reporters/Call-in Center

After a successful pilot project for the 2010 Burundian elections (see aglifpt.org/publications/peaceways/fall2011/pwfall2011.pdf), AGLI decided to implement a more ambitious project for the 2013 Kenyan elections. The concept is to train citizens to become “citizen reporters” and connect them with a Call-in Center where they can text any information they gather in their community. The whole election cycle is observed and not just election day itself since much of the fraud and intimidation occurs before the election and post-election violence is possible as occurred on a massive scale in Kenya after the December 2007 election. To the middle of January we have conduced 34 trainings and have enrolled 1,204 citizen reporters in our network. One aspect of this is that many of these citizen reporters are in remote places where the media never goes.

I attended the citizen reporter training at Lumakanda Friends Church. There were thirty-eight participants with two facilitators. The five hours of training was filled with discussion, role play, guidelines for citizen reporters, and security concerns. To give an example, one topic was “indicators” of potential violence. The analogy was made with the turn signal on a motorcycle which only indicates what the driver intends to do rather than actually doing it. So the citizen reporter needs to be aware of indicators of violence such as hate speech or development of youth gangs. These are what are needed to report to the Call-in Center so that remedial action can quickly be taken — this is discussed on the next page.

December 18 was the last day to register to vote and the Kenyan custom is to wait to act to the last moment before a deadline. So for the last two days of the month-long registration, the Call-in Center texted the 900 citizen reporters we had at that time and asked them to go to their polling stations and see if the ending process was orderly and proper — for example, that those who were in line at 5:00 PM were allowed to register. Over 200 of the citizen reporters sent in text messages and there were not significant reports of major problems.

January 17 (after I write this but before you read it) is the day that most political parties in Kenya will have their nominations for the various positions. In the past these nominations have been contentious, sometimes violent as various politicians recruit youth to booster their candidacy. We will be texting our citizen reporters and asking them to observe these nominations in their community. When the nominations are finished, the major political campaigning will begin and the citizen reporters will report any potentially violent, improper or illegal activities in their local community.  This will test our ability to react on a larger scale.

Before election day on March 4, we plan to conduct another training session for our citizen reporters so that they can be election observers. We will enroll some of these citizen reporters as official election observers with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, but others will be unofficial observers outside the polling stations because this is frequently where bribing and intimidation take place on election day.

We will then monitor the situation after the election when the vote results are announced. If there is a run-off election on April 11, this will be an added duty. Lastly we will conduct evaluation sessions with all of the citizen reporters to determine what went well and what could be improved.

Response

There is no point in receiving good accurate information if nothing is done about negative situations that are reported. As we developed this program, I was worried about how we might respond to incidents of intimidation and violence. To date our time and energy has been concentrated on reacting to the information we have received.

The most serious reports we have received were from Mt Elgon. From 2006 to 2008 this area had an armed conflict between two clans of the Sabaot in which about 600 people were killed and another 100,000 displaced. We have responded with five citizen reporter trainings on Mt Elgon for 189 citizen reporters. We had just finished our first workshop there on August 15, when the Call-in Center received a report that one of our originally Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC) participants had been assassinated in his home. The next morning, a few of our HROC facilitators/citizen reporters visited with the grieving wife and asked her if one of them could speak at the funeral. She agreed. We texted our local contacts and about forty of them attended this funeral. Erastus Chesondi, our lead HROC facilitator and citizen reporter on Mt Elgon, gave a strong peace message at the funeral. We also attended a chief’s meeting to discuss this situation and the FCPT/AGLI participants gave their feedback.

Soon thereafter four more people were killed, a school was burned down, and hate leaflets were distributed ordering all those who were not born on Mt Elgon to return to where they came from. This led us to increase our response. We conduced the civic education seminars reported on above. Both before and after these incidents, FCPT/AGLI held 12 HROC workshops for about 240 individuals. In March 2012, after the end of the first four workshops, Gladys and I attended the community celebration way up on the mountain. As I write this, we are training 18 healing companions (8 women and 10 men) from Mt Elgon at the Peace House at Lugari Yearly Meeting. We have brought Theoneste Bizimana from Rwanda and Florence Ntakarutimana from Burundi to lead this training — this shows the interaction of the work we do in the region.

One of our guidelines is to work with all sides in any conflict. This includes the government officials who have little guidance or training on how to resolve the contentious issues that are arising in their communities. In one of our HROC workshops on Mt Elgon, two chiefs and three sub-chiefs (these are the community level government officials in Kenya) attended. In another example, Getry Agizah, the FCPT coordinator, was asked by a local police commissioner to meet with her police officers. She met with 45 officers and could feel the fear behind them. They told her that they wanted the public to understand that they are also human and have feelings. She plans a follow-up listening session with them.

The nominations on January 17 will begin the campaign period leading up to the March 4 election. We are expecting to receive numerous messages that will need attention. We are/will be making direct contacts with the electoral commission, with local government officials, and the police in order to convey pertinent information to them. We will also be sending information to the Quaker policy organizations in the US, England, and Europe. Remember to look at our webpage, kenyanelections2013.org as the situation develops.