Later this month, as HRH’s Project Manager for Central and East Africa Niels Jacob Harbitz visits Kenya, a meeting between representatives of the Kenya Human Rights House Project and the Green Belt Movement, the organisation established by last year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, has also been scheduled. Overlapping interests and possible cooperation will be discussed. (8-MAR-05)

Maathai_and_Harbitz_med.jpgWhen Wangari Maathai reurned to Norway last month, for the first time since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last December, Harbitz met briefly with Maathai and initiated a discussion to identify areas of corresponding interests and even possible issues or agendas upon which to cooperate. Maathai, who among the seven organisations involved in the Kenya Human Rights HOuse Project particularly knows Release Politial Prisoners (RPP) and People Against Torture (PAT) from her time in opposition, when the previous regime tried to silence her with threats, intimidations, harassment and even beatings and arrests on numerous occasions, is excited about the Human Rights House Project and in no doubt that the need for such an establishment is no less now than it was in the past, during the Moi days.

Numerous prospects for cooperation
Together with her team, Maathai also expressed a keen interest in further discussions to identify areas within which the seven organisations strong coalition involved in the Human Rights House Project and her own Green Belt Movement may establish closer contact, exchange knowledge and experience and even develop cooperation projects. This may for instance be in areas of women’s rights, since the GBM has particularly engaged women in their tree planting and other ecological rights based projects. However, the GBM’s focus also spills over, for instance into issues of health rights, land rights, labour rights and such essentials as the right to food, water, shelter and so on. Land rights also overlap with minorities’ rights and thus with issues of discrimination, and abuses inclusing violence, torture and even, as has been seen recently in ever larger parts of Kenya, also killings. Thus, one can also imagine there being instances when the relationship between the GBM and Maathai’s old defenders RPP and PAT may be renewed.