Kenyan Authorities Urged to Implement Human Rights Report

Nairobi — The government has been criticised for its apparent foot-dragging on implementing the recommendations made in a landmark report on human rights abuses stretching over nearly five decades.

Despite strict time-lines outlined in the final report by the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, TJRC, released in May, none of the recommendations have been acted upon. The TJRC was established by an act of parliament in 2008 to investigate serious human rights violations and other injustices dating from December 1963 to February 2008.

The commission was part of a peace agreement signed by both sides in the coalition government whose formation ended the political and ethnic violence that erupted after a December 2007 general election. The truth commission was set up as part of a strategy to resolve some of the long-term grievances that led to the bloodshed.

The commission's final report was published in the government's Kenya Gazette on June 7. It was supposed to be tabled in parliament within 21 days of this official release date, but that has not happened. Nor has an implementation committee been established to provide quarterly reports on progress- all steps set out by the TJRC. The lack of response has concerned those who want to see the new government that emerged from general elections this March take firm action on the findings.

"There is no political will at all. Already there are reports of plans to have the report amended through parliament," Getrude Angote, executive director of the Nairobi-based rights group Kituo Cha Sheria said. "It means there are people who are not happy with it when we are supposed to be talking about implementation." Angote was referring to a bill tabled on August 6 that, if passed, would enable legislators to debate and change sections of the TJRC's final report.

Among those waiting eagerly to hear the TRJC's conclusions were the families of the victims of several high-profile political assassinations carried out since Kenyan independence in 1963, which were investigated in the report.

(2013-08-17/allafrica)