Sophie Price to Kenyan Activist

THE ROLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS IN BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN KENYA

Fifteen years ago, when the iron curtain fell and one authoritarian regime after the other gave way to democratically elected parliaments in Eastern Europe, one graffiti summed up the tremendous sense of relief felt by Eastern Europeans better than all others. It read, quite simply: “It’s over, Czechs are free”.

During Christmas a year and a half ago, that long forgotten scribble came back to me, with just one small change. From the late December darkness of thousands of kilometers away, I pictured someone, somewhere under the bright skies of Kenya, putting that very same sense of relief up on the wall: “It’s over, Kenyans are free”.

24 years, the duration of Daniel arap Moi’s regime, is a long time, and longer, somehow, where life expectancy is shorter. After stepping up from being Jomo Kenyatta’s vice president all the way back in 1978, Moi went on to become one of the most enduring ‘Big Men’ in all of Africa. This achievement, however, had its price. Kenyans paid for it with their safety, their freedom, and, in thousands of cases, with their lives. When New Yorkers, and the rest of the world with them, got their ‘nine-eleven’ in 2001, Kenyans had had their ‘saba-saba – seven-seven,’ also referring to the date of the event, for eleven years. On the seventh of July 1990, the police and military raided a demonstration in favour of democratisation, killing 20 people and arresting politicians, human rights activists and journalists. Needless to say, this was not the first time the illegalised opposition was made to feel the methods Moi’s regime was prepared to use. Neither was it to be the last. Instead, and throughout the nineties, ethno-political violence claimed several thousand lives. Several hundred thousand were forced to leave their homes to join the ranks of Africa’s millions of internally displaced and refugees.

Given these preconditions, the outcome of the elections of December 2002 were almost too good to be true. It was indeed over. Kenyans were, at least politically, indeed free.    

Slowly, but surely, throughout the Moi years, human rights activists and organisations spearheaded the steady push from below for democratic reforms, and ultimately democracy. While, in effect, all opposition activity was banned from the early 80s onwards, the activists themselves suffered unlawful arrests, physically brutal interrogation, imprisonment without charge or trial, and systematic torture, sometimes going on for months, for instance in the cellars of Nyayo House downtown Nairobi, now open for the public to see what actually went on. When I was in Kenya last, a few months ago, friends from the human rights organisation People Against Torture, took me there. One of them had spent time there before, he said, as a prisoner.

People Against Torture is just one example among many of independent human rights organisations who have had difficulties adjusting to the new working conditions of the entire Kenyan civil society. Every day during the Moi years, People Against Torture and most other human rights organisations had their reasons to exist renewed. The need for human rights organisations to go on was self-evident. Now, with their prime enemy gone, many of these organisations have had to reconsider their mandate, their priorities and ultimately their continued reason to exist. My impression, from working with a group of seven Kenyan human rights organisations, brought together over the last years in an attempt to establish a Human Rights House in Nairobi, is that the immediate sense of relief has been followed by a collective crisis of identity. Several factors are making this crisis more difficult to get through.

First of all, the misconception that civil society’s job is done the moment democracy is introduced is widespread. However, habits, traditions and whole cultures, for instance of the use of violence, established over a quarter of a century or more are not done away with overnight. So, even for the simple reason that there is no shortage of tasks to deal with and cases to raise, civil society, including its human rights organisations, still have a role to play. Furthermore, it is easy enough to understand why a civil society is needed in undemocratic regimes. It is there to oust these regimes, as peacefully as possible. In democracies, on the other hand, and especially where modern democratic experience is limited, the role of civil society is not quite as easily understood. This goes not only for the population at large, but also, if only in a different and deeper sense, for members both of civil society organisations and the international community, present not the least to support these organisations. Ambassadors and their staff at so-called ‘bistandsambassader’ – aid embassies – make no exception. Thus, whatever there might be of self-doubt among for instance human rights organisations may well be reinforced now in meetings with the international community.
 
The second reason why many Kenyan human rights organisations seem to be going through a crisis of identity, is that the country’s oversized new parliament has recruited so heavily from the former opposition, not the least from human rights organisations, that many of these now suffer the loss quite severely. Naturally, most of those who have moved on have been part of their organisations’ leadership. With them went much of the organisations’ history, memory, network, and experience. While this is of course flattering to those lucky enough to be called upon to become MPs, and also a compliment to their organisations, the cruel irony is that some of these organisations now find themselves struggling to overcome the loss. Hence, one important role of Kenyan human rights organisations seems to be to provide its new democracy with true democrats, even to the point that some of these organisations have come close to breaking down in the process.

The third reason why human rights organisations suffer a crisis of identity, has to do with a set of unfortunate tendencies within international cooperation and development aid which in sum serve to increase the hardship currently felt by many of these organisations. The readiness among donors towards the end of the Moi era to hand out small grants to small independent organisations, many of them clearly oppositional, seems to be reduced. Now, donors like to join forces in so-called basket funding schemes, from which fewer, but bigger projects tend to benefit. Also, in an attempt to move away from the patronising attitudes guiding the careful earmarking of funds and equally minute monitoring of their spending, ever more donors now allocate ever larger parts of their budgets for so-called state budget support. This is money quite simply added to the actual state’s budget, for this state to spend pretty much as it finds suitable. As a consequence of both tendencies; towards basket funding and state budget funding alike, small and medium sized non-governmental organisations, among them many of the most important human rights organisations, are the ones suffering the consequences. The reports I receive from some of these organisations, is that the moral and financial support they used to receive has now been reduced to levels so low that they may have to shut down, soon.

Anyone reflecting for a moment on the potential consequences of contributing to the dismantling of civil society in Kenya, will realise that this is not a good move. In fact, one may argue that it is only now, with the introduction of a public space run, at long last, according to democratic principles, that civil society has been given the chance to begin the actual building of a sustainable democracy. In my opinion, continued support to civil society organisations is an absolute must for Kenyan democracy to have even the slightest chance of settling down . This is basic democratic theory: All stable democracies stand firmly only on two legs: State and civil society. Thus, to make a democracy sway, stumble and fall, it doesn’t matter which of the two legs you hurt. The lesson to be learnt is this: You only need to hurt one. Hence, for as long as the international community keep moving its support back and forth, funding only one of the two at a time, either state or civil society, Kenyan democracy will no doubt continue to suffer. The best case scenario is that it will remain fragile. The worst case is that it will cease to exist. Thankfully, we haven’t come thus far yet. As a matter of fact, we are not anywhere near it. At the same time, history tells us that even if the honeymoon years are not the most difficult for a democracy to survive, it is still a crucial time in terms of establishing the balance of power between state and civil society. And unless you get this right, and do so right from the outset, democracy will suffer and, more often than not, rather sooner than later, collapse.

My conclusion, therefore, is simple: While the role of human rights organisations in building democracy in Kenya might be easier to identify and define before than after the introduction of democracy, this very same introduction does not at all affect the importance of the role human rights organisations have to play. Rendering human rights organisations less important now than what they were prior to the introduction of democracy, equals rendering democracy itself a once-and-for-all achievement, like coming of age, for instance. Once you have it, you can’t lose it. Nothing could be wronger, no assumption could be riskier. After the hectic and ecstatic moment of introduction comes the rather more tedious period of consolidation. And unlike before, when human rights organisations were silenced, the consolidation period is the time during which these organisations may have a real say in how Kenyan democracy ought to take shape. This, however, requires not only a full recognition of the role they have played, but also a genuine attempt to secure their continued existence on the basis of a profound understanding of their continued reason to exist. And unless this dawns upon everyone involved, we may well see Kenya’s recent democratic dawn turn, not into broad day-light, but straight into dusk and darkness. Such, I believe, is the importance of the role that human rights organisations have to play in building democracy in Kenya. It is true that Mois authoritarian regime is over. It is true, as well, that Kenyans are free. But it is also true that building democracy is a long process and that this process has only just been allowed to begin.

Thank you.