News
Death penalty and ban on gay unions to stay
Posted Tuesday, May 11 2010 at 21:00
Kenya has rejected a UN proposal to delete the death penalty from its law books.
It has also resisted attempts to recognise same sex marriages.
These were among a raft of recommendations that the government rejected at the UN Council meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, which ended on Monday.
The meeting, a Universal Peer Review which assesses the human rights record of member states, endorsed Kenya’s performance in seeking to improve on its position.
Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Mutula Kilonzo led a government delegation to defend its record on human rights, in particular extra-judicial killings.
A statement by Kenya’s envoy to the UN mission in Geneva, Mr Philip Owade, said the public had vetoed attempts to abolish the death penalty.
Even though Kenya has retained the death penalty, the last official executions took place in 1987.
This has led to the rise in the number of people on death row in the government’s maximum prisons to an estimated 5,000 by last year.
Death sentences for 4,000 convicts were commuted to life sentences by President Kibaki last year.
Similarly, Kenya refused to reverse its declaration of same sex marriages as a crime on grounds that they were a taboo among its people.
However, the statement was categorical that gay people were not discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality.
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Submitted by BELTANEFIRE5Posted May 12, 2010 08:49 PM
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Submitted by lanceeli
Something they are not telling us is that they agreed to decriminilize homosexuality in that same meeting. This makes Article 2(6) in the proposed constititution very dangerous .
Posted May 12, 2010 06:45 PM -
Submitted by Nziokanzioka
The refusal to de-criminalize consensual anal sex between men and in heterosexual settings is a step back to ensuring rights to privacy and respect for sexual rights of individuals and an affront to the consent and will of individuals. For the Government to state that gays are not discriminated on the basis of their sexual orientation is factually wrong, hypocritical, mistaken, poor, in bad faith and shocking. I am appalled by this assertion. Its common knowledge that the opposite is true.
Posted May 12, 2010 06:24 PM -
Submitted by KenyanSamenya
Shame and a big joke! How does the government spend tax payers’ money to send delegates to go and defend such crimes as abuse of human rights and particular extra-judicial killings committed against the same tax payers?
Posted May 12, 2010 09:10 AM -
Submitted by Tafakari
Yet they have agreed on the WHO defination of health to include, emotional, mental and physical.This is ok. But then makes the proposed consitution to effcetively legalise arbotion.
Posted May 12, 2010 08:32 AM
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I think if I was on death row in a KENYAN or any harsh prison system I might knowing there was no reprieve ,actually ask for the sentence to be carried out.So to leave the death penalty on the books has 2 sides to it.Perhaps for the seriously dangerous who can never be released a choice is given Perhaps immoral but an offer to give a payment to dependants of those executed if they accept is a way out and will save the years of costs holding an inmate in prison entails