Sunday, December 26, 2010

Think of IDPs as you 'assist' Ocampo Six

Related StoriesChristmas is for the third year a dull day for over 35,000 displaced persons still stranded in refugee camps, even as MPs contemplate raising money for defence of suspects of post-election violence.
For many in Naivasha, Kisumu, Nakuru, and Eldoret, scars of the 2007 post-election chaos will be re-opened, even as leaders lodge an appeal for funds for those implicated by ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
This also comes at a time the Government is under pressure to prove skeptics wrong in its latest pledge to resettle remaining IDPs before President Kibaki retires in about two years. Despite repeated presidential pledges that IDPs would be resettled before this Christmas, Special Programmes Minister Esther Murugi admitted last Friday the Government had failed to meet its promise to IDPs.
"It is true we had promised to clear the camps before Christmas. But unavoidable challenges have emerged. For instance, our attempt to move some 800 IDP families to a farm the Government bought in Narok County has been slowed down by politics," says Murugi.
Similar sentimentsThen there is the controversy stirred by appeals to raise funds for those singled out by Moreno-Ocampo as carrying the greatest responsibility for the post-election chaos.
While it has been argued those in favour of the move have a right to do so, one cannot overlook the fact that behind the IDP euphemism, are hundreds of traumatised parents and children whose lives were ruined.
For victims like Bernard Orinda who lost 11 members of his family in the chaos, appeals to ‘assist’ the ‘Ocampo Six’ sound cruel.
Similar sentiments are held by other IDPS who have in the past three years lost kin to diseases from exposure to cold and poor sanitation in the camps, with little reaction from their MPs.
Although immediate resettlement of IDPS ranked high in Agenda Four of the National Accord that created the Grand Coalition Government, interest in IDPs seems to have been lost after the power sharing deal was sealed.
Cabinet meetingsBut in an interview with The Standard On Saturday, Murugi said she should be judged on her own record, as she replaced Naomi Shabaan recently.
It was the Government’s wish to have settled Turkana, Luhyia, Kisii, and Kikuyu families from Eldoret and Kitale on the Mau Narok farm by now," Murugi said. She added the Government was determined to resettle the families in the Narok farm before next February.
Murugi said she had cautioned a Narok politician, believed to be behind the resistance, that he would be held responsible should anything happen to the displaced.
"The politician tried to resist the movement of the families even at Cabinet meetings. It is all politics because the so-called ancestral land claims became an issue after the Government bought the land from the former owner. The former owner used the land for many years, but the locals did not raise an issue," the minister said.
The minister said the Government had identified 18,000 acres of land for resettlement of the remaining IDPs.
"The Minister of Finance, Uhuru Kenyatta has also committed to releasing the remaining Sh1.5 billion early next year, for us to go through other stages of negotiations with vendors before resettlement, " she says.
Politically instigatedBut even as the Government buys land to resettle IDPs, the question of what happened to the land left behind by the fleeing masses remains unanswered.
The history of IDPs stretches back to the 1990s when hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes in politically instigated clashes. But at no time has their plight stuck out more like it did after the 2007 post-election chaos.
Kenya’s imageThe alacrity, with which MPs passed a Motion seeking to have Kenya withdraw from the Rome Statute that establishes the International Criminal Court, is baffling. But the same MPs have not lobbied the Government to resettle IDPs.
"Passage of the Motion is inconsequential to the ICC process, but it proves that impunity is deeply embedded in our society," says International Centre for Policy and Conflict executive director Ndung’u Wainaina.
"Such actions dent Kenya’s image because what we are saying is that matters of humanity and justice can take a back seat," adds Wainaina.
"The fate of six potential ICC suspects cannot be more important than the 1,200 lives lost and the pain of thousands of Kenyans displaced during the post-election violence," he says.
Wainaina says besides the IDPS, scores of other people who were shot or injured in the violence have had no help from MPs who are rallying the public to raise money for those who could face trial for perpetrating post-election violence.
Former Committee of Experts member, Njoki Ndung’u, says resettling IDPs should be given priority in the New Year.
"Many of the IDPs are women who were either widowed or abandoned. Many have no proof of ownership of land titles and are landless," she says.

No comments:

Post a Comment