Search

Begin New Search Topic Community Political Geography Kenya

1. Community Resilience and Social Capital in the Reconstruction and Recovery Process for Post-Election Violence Victims in Kenya

Author:
Julius Kinyeki
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
African Journal on Conflict Resolution
Institution:
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:
This study addresses three questions: how Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) following the post-election violence of 2007/2008 in Kenya are recreating their community resilience capacities; how the Kenyan government and non-state interventions are influencing the victims’ livelihood strategies towards their reconstruction and recovery process and how social support and social capital have accelerated their reconstruction and recovery process. The study adopted qualitative research methodology, and primary data were collected since January 2015, continuously and concurrently with data analysis. The key finding was that ownership of land is identified and perceived as a milestone in the process of post-conflict reconstruction and recovery, and as an avenue for community resilience. The study found that after the rather short-term programmes of the Kenyan government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs), the main means of livelihood for IDPs still is casual labour and other menial jobs. However, many IDPs, especially those who were not placed in camps or resettled on farms, but integrated with host communities, developed new emergent norms to support each other. The key recommendations are that government should evaluate the economic loss of every integrated IDP, and that those resettled in government procured farms should be provided with legal ownership documents. There should be an urgent re-profiling of IDPs in camps and a definite commitment to follow the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004). The findings of this study bring to light new knowledge on the theory of social capital. It shows how victims of displacement develop new emergent norms, values and culture to support each other, which eventually creates a new society/community.
Topic:
Reconstruction, Violence, Recovery, Social Capital, and Community
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

2. Local Networks for Peace: Lessons from Community-Led Peacebuilding

Author:
Lesley Connolly, Laura Powers, Senzwesihle Ngubane, Patrick Kanyangara, Kessy Ekomo-Soignet, Nicolas Chamat Matallana, Stephen Kirimi, Hasini Haputhanthri, Masana Ndinga-Kanga, and Webster Zambara
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
In recent years, there have been increasing calls to ensure local ownership of peacebuilding design and practice, to take local knowledge fully into account in designing peacebuilding programs and assessing conflicts, and to strive for the meaningful participation of local peacebuilding actors. In the search for new approaches to connect local-level initiatives to international programs and to move local knowledge from the bottom up, community-led peacebuilding networks may have a key role to play. This volume includes case studies of community-led peacebuilding networks in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Kenya, Liberia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe to identify approaches for more inclusive and integrated peacebuilding. These case studies, written by local peacebuilders working in each of the countries, underscore the organizational, political, and financial advantages and risks to operating as part of a broader network. The aim of this report is to enhance understanding among international peacebuilding practitioners and policymakers of peacebuilding network structures, including their comparative advantages and challenges. In doing so, it aims to guide efforts not only to incorporate local knowledge and expertise into international initiatives but also to identify how these efforts can support and magnify local efforts. By better understanding how local peacebuilding networks operate in their communities, the international community can begin to better understand the challenges local organizations face, how to support and strengthen peacebuilding work on the ground, and how such initiatives contribute to building and sustaining peace.
Topic:
Civil Society, Women, Youth, Networks, Peace, and Community
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, South Asia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Central African Republic

3. Peacebuilding through Health in Kenya’s Urban Informal Settlements: Insights for Policy

Author:
Roseanne Nijru
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
This briefing note is based on exploratory research in two informal settlements in Nairobi: Mathare and Kibera. It makes recommendations for engaging health workers in peacebuilding processes in urban informal settlements in Kenya. The recommendations are based on study conclusions showing that health care sys- tems, especially community-centered primary health care services and workers, have great potential to promote peace and security in Kenya. Violent conflicts constitute a public health challenge because of their adverse effects on health, social, and economic systems, which lead to declines in population well-being. Thus, peace and health are mutually reinforcing, and development cannot take place without good health. Despite this health-peace nexus, Kenya’s National Policy for Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (2015) and National Cohesion 1 and Integration Commission (NCIC, 2008) , both formulated in a volatile political climate, have not recognized the contribution of the health system to peace- building. In 1998, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted “Health as a Bridge for Peace (HBP)” as a policy framework on the premise that the role of health care providers in promoting peace is significant for the attainment of “Health for All.”2 This study suggests that health care systems in Kenya can be part of the multifaceted peacebuilding effort in urban informal settlements that experience a range of violence—political, ethnic, extremist, resource-related, gender-based—and vicious cycles of retaliatory attacks.
Topic:
Health, Peacekeeping, Urban, and Community
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

4. Testing Community Consent: Tullow Oil project in Kenya

Author:
Dan Mullins and Justus Wambayi
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This case study assesses the extent of Tullow Oil’s compliance with the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in Turkana County, Kenya. It examines the company’s engagement in selected communities and finds that, while community engagement processes have improved in important ways, it has yet to achieve FPIC. The study provides recommendations that contribute to the evidence base for FPIC practice beyond this project, in order to improve FPIC implementation across the oil and gas industry.
Topic:
Oil, Natural Resources, Gas, Private Sector, and Community
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

5. The “Chief” and the New Baraza: Harnessing Social Media for Community Policing in Kenya

Author:
Duncan Mainye Omanga
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The exponential growth of social media use in Africa is not in doubt. The rapid rise in the use of mobile telephony, coupled with the spread of Internet-enabled gadgets, has made social media the latest catalyst of a grand transformation in Africa’s social and political complexion. This essay reveals how a local chief in Kenya has taken to using the microblogging website Twitter to radically transform the historical meeting place known as the baraza into a site of peacebuilding and community policing. In this study, the main aim is to show how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used every day in Lanet Umoja and how they punctu- ate ordinary life to build, in a subtle yet effective way, a more cohesive soci- ety at a very local level. Without exaggerating the impact and place of ICTs in building peace in Africa, I intend to show how a local actor, using local social structures and infrastructures, has attempted, with varying degrees of suc- cess, to create predictable patterns—or routine forms—of consumption and use of ICTs that, in a sense, reproduce a communication “fabric” for fighting crime, responding to emergencies, and creating a virtual vigilante. His use of an ICT also acts as an experimental form of spiritual healing. As several other scholars have argued, caution is needed in making broad claims regarding the impact of ICTs in Africa and whether they are simply refashioning existing communication structures (Nyabuga 2008; Asiedu 2012; Berger 2012; Mudhai et al 2011). In pursuing this study, I had, therefore, to take note of three broad aspects of my research. One was the main actor (the chief), the second was his medium (Twitter; mobile telephony), and the third was his audience (residents of Lanet Umoja). Using Manuel Castells’s idea of the network and John Postill’s of concept actors or agents in a “networked community,” I attempt to show how these three components interact to reproduce the aforementioned “fabric.”
Topic:
Internet, Social Media, Police, and Community
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa