The Yamumbi camp is home to more than 100 families.
NAIROBI, KENYA – On Christmas Eve, Margaret Njeri stood in the blazing afternoon sun with two of her children Kimani, 7, and Kamau, 5, her gaze blank and hopes waning.
Njeri waited in a line of more than 100 families who patiently queued for hours. They assembled in the morning after rumors circulated that a charitable organization would come to their camp to dish out food for Christmas.
“I never imagined that my life could be reduced to a beggar’s,” says Njeri, a resident of Yamumbi camp in Eldoret, a town in western Kenya for Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.
A 52-year-old mother of five, she and her family have been living in this transit camp since October 2009, after the official IDP camps were closed by the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups once the government declared that all IDPs had been resettled.
“We were forced out of the official camps, yet we did not even receive the 10,000 shillings [$125 USD] that the government had promised us as compensation fee,” she says. “We had no home to go to.”
Njeri is one of tens of thousands of IDPs in Kenya who were driven out of their homes after the 2007 post-election chaos and violence that overtook the country. The United Nations recently called attention to the Kenyan government’s failed promise to resettle all IDPs by the end of 2010, as others have accused the government of embezzling missing IDP funds. The International Criminal Court, ICC, has also pressed charges against those suspected to be most responsible for the post-election violence, but Kenya’s president is requesting permission for Kenya to try the cases itself.
Njeri and her family were among the more than 663,000 people who fled their homes after the December 2007 disputed presidential elections, according to a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, report released in February 2010. More than half of those who fled settled into the 118 refugee camps, like Njeri’s family did. In 2007, two presidential candidates, current Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity, PNU, who was also the incumbent president, and Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, ODM, both claimed victory and neither was willing to concede. The dispute led to violence that rocked the country in early 2008 and left 1,300 people dead and more than 78,000 homes burned down, according to the OCHA report.
In late 2009, the camps set up for the more than 300,000 people who lost their homes were closed. Still, thousands of families like Njeri’s had no place to go. Though the Kenyan government promised to settle all remaining IDPs by the end of 2010, many families remain in tattered, transit camps.
“We were forced out of our 5-acre piece of land in Maai Mahiu,” Njeri says. “We watched helplessly as our sources of livelihoods went up in flames. Now look at what has come out of me and my family.”
She says her three daughters and two sons could not continue with their education because they were displaced from their former schools, and now she and her 57-year-old husband have no alternative sources of money to send them to new schools.
“Besides, the older ones have to help me put food on the table at the end of the day,” she says.
Her oldest, Mary Wanjiku, 17, and her other children now wake up daily and look for odd jobs outside the camp so that they can bring something home at the end of the day.
Yamumbi is a transit camp that was established after the formal camps were closed. The tents are now tattered, and there are no basic amenities, like water and sanitation. Residents say their outlooks are bleak.
“I have watched people die in this camp due to sanitation problems, and who knows, tomorrow it may be me or any of my family members,” Njeri says.
She laments the government’s inability to resettle them as it had promised back in 2008.
“I camped at the Eldoret showground for about one and a half years,” Njeri says. “The camp was closed down, and we were told to go back home. But how can you go back to nothing? How can you walk straight into death?”
Njeri says it is a bit safer to stay in the transit camp than to go back to the enemy, referring to the post-election violence between the Kalenjin and Kikuyu tribes.
Although the Ministry of Special Programs promised that all IDPs would be resettled by December 2010, the OCHA report revealed that 31,000 IDPs have yet to be resettled. In December, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka pushed that promise back to the end of 2011, according to the Daily Nation newspaper.
“The government has the obligation to resettle the IDPs,” says George Nyongesa of Bunge La Mwananchi, or People’s Parliament, a forum to engage citizens in Kenya’s governance and development agenda. “Funds had been released, yet so little has been done so far on this issue. It is a shame to the government and a marker of impunity.”
Lawyer and human rights activist Harun Ndubi says that inaccurate data regarding the IDPs is one reason why there has been no accountability for the IDP resettlement fund.
Several lobbying groups have also accused the government of embezzling the IDP funds that were channeled through the National Humanitarian Fund for Mitigation of Effects and Resettlement of Victims. According to the OCHA report, about 200 million shillings, or almost $2.5 million USD, from the fund can’t be accounted for. Local media outlets, including the Daily Nation and The Standard newspaper, have said that the amount of missing monies is as high as 500 million shillings, or more than $6 million USD.
According to the Ministry of Finance, in addition to money spent buying land for resettlement and the 10,000 shillings, $125 USD, given to each household as a reconstruction fee, the government also used money from the fund to pay for electricity, water and medical bills for the IDPs in the official camps, as well as “on campaigns for peace, reconciliation and healing.”
Many IDPs here have expressed bitter sentiments toward the government because they believe it is not committed to their well-being.
“They shared slots in government and forgot about us,” says Julius Mwangi, another IDP in the camp, referring to the power-sharing agreement between the two presidential candidates that ended the post-election violence. “They gave us promises that were never honored.”
Meanwhile, late last year, the ICC got involved.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo released in December the names of six suspects who he believes are most responsible for the 2007 post-election violence. The ICC, of which Kenya is a member, was forced to take up the case after the Kenyan government failed to establish a local tribunal to try these suspects. The six are being charged with crimes against humanity, including rape, murder and torture, according to the Associated Press.
The government is currently trying to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC and holds Kenya accountable to its proceedings, but this would not apply to the current investigations. Civil society disproves of withdrawing, according to Human Rights Watch. Kibaki is now requesting that the ICC defer the cases and let Kenya try the perpetrators itself, a move that has been backed by both the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which includes Kenya’s neighboring countries, and the African Union at its summit last weekend. Kibaki will present his request to the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to order the ICC to suspend the cases, as a next step in the proceedings.
The six men accused of fanning violence in different forms are being prosecuted under two cases depending on the party members that they targeted, according to a December ICC press release. The first case charges suspended Higher Education Minister William Ruto, former Industrialization Minister Henry Kosgey and radio broadcaster Joshua Arap Sang with being among the principal planners and organizers of crimes against PNU supporters. The second case charges Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Uhuru Kenyatta with mobilizing the Mungiki criminal organization to attack ODM supporters and former Police Chief Mohammed Hussein Ali and Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura with authorizing police to use excessive force against ODM supporters and facilitating attacks against them. Kibaki said in a press release that the six had not yet been fully investigated and, therefore, could not be charged as guilty until the charges were confirmed in court.
Kenyatta and Ruto both said their consciences were clear, and Ali has denied any wrongdoing, according to The Standard. In press conferences aired on NTVKenya, Kosgey said that he was shocked to hear the charges and was innocent, and Sang said he never organized, financed nor participated in any rallies that discussed ways of orchestrating violence against his fellow Kenyans.
In a press release, Muthaura said he thoroughly repudiated the charges.
“The suggestion that I have done anything to warrant criminal investigation is manifest nonsense,” he said. “It amounts to an unwarranted slur on my reputation and is both unfair and unjustified.”
Muthaura said he respected the ICC as an institution and trusted that the truth would prevail.
IDPs in this transit camp, however, say they are pleased to see criminal proceedings take place. Njeri says she is optimistic that this process will bring justice to all IDPs in Kenya.
“It has been long overdue,” says Mary Wangare, who also lives in the camp. “We are still bitter that, three years down the line, criminals still walk free while our lives have been turned to ashes.”
The politics surrounding the IDP issue are already becoming an important platform for the 2012 election here. Last week, President Kibaki held a rally in Eldoret on Jan. 21 and gathered supporters around the IDP issue.
But for now, Njeri says she and thousands of other families still have no place to go.