Why the human rights agenda in Kenya needs boost with better data

This week, a friend asked my assessment of the state of human rights in Kenya.

The question caught me off-guard. As a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, I thought I should have a ready answer to the question.

It was troubling that it took me a few minutes to figure out a response.

Yet, I know I am not alone in this. We take the issue of human rights for granted.

We assume that since the promulgation of the 2010 rights-friendly Constitution, the issue of human rights is sorted.

We are dead wrong as a recent Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) National Torture Prevalence Survey indicates.

In 2011, IMLU reported that 23 per cent of the 1,200 survey respondents indicated they had been victims of torture or ill treatment.

This number has increased to 30.3 per cent of the 2,400 surveyed respondents in 2016.

One gets the sense from IMLU that we live in a culture that has internalised and accepted torture and ill treatment as normal.

As a respondent in Nairobi stated, torture “… is very common. Only that the cases we hear of are those that have reached the public eye. But the unknown ones are many…”

The most affected category of victims are between the ages of 41 and 45 years old, mostly male who live either in urban or peri-urban areas.

MAJOR ABUSERS

Though the data isn’t disaggregated to give firm figures, one can infer that a significant number of these victims are fairly educated and are either employed or self-employed.

Unsurprisingly, the regular police were cited by 61.4 percent of those surveyed as the main perpetrators of torture and ill treatment in Kenya.

Administration Police, county government security, and local chiefs follow closely.

In other words, state agencies represent the greatest abuser of human rights.

It is, therefore, the greatest contradiction of our experience that we still expect state agencies to be the primary guardians of human rights.

For me, there is logic in citizen perception of prevalence of torture that goes beyond the debates we might have about the findings IMLU has provided us.

Citizens rarely report incidences of torture or ill-treatment.

Listen to IMLU: “On the reporting of incidents of torture and ill treatment, 50.6 per cent (1,214) of the 2,400 surveyed respondents indicated that for the most part citizens choose not to make reports to the authorities with 30.8 per cent (374) of these respondents indicating that one needs money to access justice, 26.9 per cent (327) stating that no assistance is given to the victims of torture and ill treatment and 23.1 per cent (280) opining that victims do not report incidents of torture and ill treatment due to the fear of reprisals.”

The report further notes, and this is very instructive, that of “the 31.7 per cent (376) of surveyed respondents who indicated that citizens do report torture and ill treatment, 36.6 per cent (434) noted that action is rarely taken against the perpetrators of these incidents”.

This is instructive because I have been subjected to such ill treatment by the then Ruiru council askaris.

BACKED OUT

I was arrested allegedly for obstructing justice after I protested when the askaris showed up on a Friday afternoon and started harassing a salonist and a vehicle mechanic on flimsy reasons.

After hauling me in the police cell, I dutifully reported to the Magistrate’s Court in Thika many times contesting the accusations.

Eventually, the Ruiru council prosecutor stopped appearing in court when he realised I was going to fight the case.

For hauling me in the police cell and failing to appear in court, the askaris and the prosecutor went free without any punishment or warning.

This explains why it is indeed commendable that IMLU conducted this survey with a view to laying out their strategic plan for 2017-2021.

We need more and better data on this question.

Godwin R. Murunga is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi. [email protected]