Transitional Justice Forum

Some strong questions from Kenya

We recently received a couple of very strongly argued comments from Ndung'u Wainaina, the Executive Director of the Nairobi-based International Center for Policy and Conflict. I think our current software enables only two of us here at TJF to see all the comments as they come in. (Several, like Mr. Wainaina's, are put onto older TJF posts, so readers don't see them easily. I hope I might find a way to "fix" that in the software.)

I strongly welcome the comments that TJF has started to receive from Mr. Wainaina and a couple of other very thoughtful people in the developing world. (For example, see the comments that Mr. Bonifacio Belo of Timor L'este contributed here.) And I urge all TJF readers from the developing world to consider contributing comments to this blog, so your voices can be well heard in the discussion over these absolutely vital issues.

I also, of course, urge readers from all other parts of the world to contribute comments-- including their (your) responses to the issues raised by our colleagues from the developing world.

Anyway, the questions and reflections articulated by Mr. Wainaina are so important that I've taken the liberty of giving them a light edit and copying them here and into the next main post, in the hope that more people can now notice and read them, and also (I hope) start reacting to them in the Comments...

Thank you for sending these contributions, Mr. Wainaina! ~HC

by Ndung'u Wainaina
Executive Director, International Center for Policy and Conflict

Having read a lot of what transitonal justice practitioners have been writing and placing their arguments on, I have the following observations to make: First the the scope and mechanisms of truth commissions have to be re-evalauted so that the current office holders would not deter justice from being realized. I am arguing this because if the concentration is on victims, then what comes of people who continue to hold office yet they themslves are perpetrators? More so within a situation where the incoming government may not include a credible number of reformers to push for accountability of the past.

A case in point is in Kenya, where virtually the entire [roster] of previous regimes' civil servants and political class has been retained or have found their way back into power wheels. These people are hell bent in defending their past and lack any incentive to allow accountability of their past actions. Worse of [all] is where civil society has been dilapidated and co-opted by incoming government in the pretext that the civil society played a crucial role in ushering the new regime. How then do you develop a cushion to ensure the pressure is maintained on the new regime?

The social and economic crimes have to find their place in transtional justice aganda. From arguements advanced previously, many seems reluctant to accomodate these crimes within the sphere of truth commissions. I think more debates are required over this subject.