IDPs should be resettled in a peaceful environment

Published on May 24, 2008, 12:00 am

By Dr Kiplege Zochin

Resettling displaced persons in Rift Valley requires a sustainable mechanism for peace building and conflict resolution which may entail participatory strategies.
The efforts should involve the affected communities and their leaders. We cannot afford the consequences of forced resettlement.

Dialogue should be initiated in all affected areas. Chiefs and their assistants, councillors, church leaders and local elders should be involved in the peace talks. Each group should be encouraged to express their fears and suspicions.

Forced settlement will not work. It was recently reported that IDPs felt the Government was coercing host communities to accept them back. This was confirmed last week when IDPs who had been transported back to their farms in Burnt Forest returned to their camps. Mr Julius Nderitu, an IDP from Rukuini farm in Uasin Gishu District, reportedly said the situation on the ground forced him to return to the camp.

"You cannot force your way into enemy territory without reconciliation. Now they think we want to forcefully go back there, yet it is the Government that wants us to," he said. And Archbishop Cornelius Korir of Eldoret Catholic Diocese called on the Government to pursue dialogue.

Agriculture Minister, Mr William Ruto, concurs. He recently visited the IDPs at the Eldoret Showground accompanied by some Rift Valley MPs. He is reported to have told the victims to move only when they were ready, and that they should not be forced out of the camps.

The different communities should be brought together to discuss how they can co-exist without suspicion. It should involve striking deals on issues of mutual interest that cement their relationship. Their resolutions should be documented through minutes for future references.


Peace-building and conflict resolution

The proceedings of such meetings should be made sacred through prayers led by traditional and religious leaders. The local administration and humanitarian agencies can come in as facilitators.

Everybody’s participation in peace-building and conflict resolution will help protect the remaining limited resources. This includes human lives and infrastructure. Reconstruction is therefore an expensive undertaking.

We should build peace through initiatives that ensure destruction does not happen again.

Aid agencies have a crucial role in conflict prevention. This entails early warnings, grassroots peace building and networking with responsible decision-makers. The challenge of putting in place preventive measures to conflict is a fundamental global concern.

Two functions are expected of humanitarian and aid agencies. First is to give early warnings before a conflict erupts or escalates.

Second, they should engage the community in a gradual process to change attitude, perception and biased beliefs through education workshops, conflict transformation and conflict resolution.

Early warnings imply proactively taking part in actions that counter a plausible conflict. An aid agency working in a particular area needs to be on the alert, regularly making analyses of the political and social situation.

The challenge, therefore, is for these agencies to design strategic engagements to prevent conflict.

During last year’s election campaigns, the Government and peace agencies should have expected any eventuality, including inter-ethnic violence. They should have taken corrective measures to avert the post-election skirmishes.

This also puts into sharp focus the Government’s own early warning systems, through the National Security Intelligence Service.

There is need for present and future coordinated efforts towards conflict prevention.
We need sustainable peace-building and conflict resolution.

-The writer (ronzochin@yahoo.com) is a management consultant in Nairobi

http://www.eastandard.net/commentaries/?id=1143987132&cid=15

The Clintons in sorrow as Obama sings ‘Yes, we can!’

By Okech Kendo

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is broke. She is borrowing to stoke dying embers of hope.

The woman who represents corporate America has run out of campaign cash and donors, while her rival Barack Obama’s vote-hunting war chest climbs by the dollar. Obama, the precocious second-generation Kenyan-American is propelled by the audacity of hope, with the call: "Yes, we can!"

Hillary has also depleted the bank of those who believe she still can, as she continues to lose those who believed she could. Supporters are pleading with her to quit with grace than waiting to exit in disgrace, too shrivelled to bargain.

Quit, when your stocks are still redeemable, is the message Hillary does not want to hear — not just yet.

Not that those who say she should leave love Hillary less, but they admire Obama more.

Near the sunset on the gruelling primaries for party presidential candidate, Democrats understand there is more to the race than Hillary claiming she is ready to be commander-in-chief on day one.

"Barack Obama has waged a very effective campaign. He is an unusually capable and talented man. I frankly didn’t know him when I endorsed Hillary last October," a Democratic Party leader and former US senator from South Dakota, who made failed attempt at White House in 1972, told Reuters, last week.

Americans who did not believe a black man could, within their lifetime, make such a winning bid for the White House, are joining the change-hungry. Their inspiration is Obama’s chorus, "Yes, we can!" And they are saying, "Yes, he can!"

Obama is leading in State support, pledged delegates and super-delegates. Super-delegates nominate the Democratic Party presidential candidate during the August Convention, if the race gets that far. The Democrat would then face the Republican nominee John MacCain in the November General Election.

Last week Hillary had a victory in Indiana that tasted like a loss. Obama had a loss that was too tight it seemed like a win.

Hillary’s two-point win in Indiana and Obama’s earlier 14-point lead in North Carolina gave the precocious ‘Kenyan’ new gravitas.

Hillary is in a quandary. Delegates no longer return her telephone calls. Donors are not keen on banking on a candidate on the losing trail. Now, it’s only Hillary who lends to the Hillary campaign.

Obama needs just 150 total delegates to win the nomination. Hillary still must convince 320 to reach the touchline. Even her most ardent supporters say she has no mathematical chance of winning. Not even Tuesday win in West Virginia can salvage her ambition.

Does not believe this is over

Hillary is fighting on, but Oregon and Kentucky, voting on May 20, may not rescue her from the precipice.

The Clinton clan is moaning. After the narrow win in Indiana last week, Bill Clinton was described as looking as "sour as a giant cranberry".

Her daughter Chelsea "appeared to be on the verge of tears".

Hillary, dressed in fluorescent scarlet, was described as "dagger-eyed and guns blazing in a remake of the zombie movie Dawn of the Dead".

The First Daughter who used to introduce her mother as "the next president of the United States" now remembers to add "hopefully".
"Apart from Hillary herself, it is very hard to find people who do not believe this is over," says one commentator.

"She is in denial." The woman is battered, bruised and brazen, but she is not quitting. She borrows to stay on.

From the Obama-Hillary duel we learn that small people across small towns that contribute, say, Sh500 or Sh1,000 are stronger than captains of corruption who donate Sh100m, at Sh1m-a-plate dinners at five-star hotels in Nairobi.

Such are the captors who force ‘bad candidates’ with power to rig elections, so the benefactors can recoup their ‘investments’. Those who donate Sh500 with clean hearts just want good governance.

That Obama could win with petty cash from largely nondescript Democrats is a lesson for Kenya’s would-be presidential candidates.

Hillary is heading towards a fall. Then she would probably plead with Obama to name her his running mate — a potential first woman vice-president of the United States.
The New York senator had tasted White House as the First Lady.

But her attempt to return to Washington as president and commander-in-chief, is in trouble after the Indiana-North Carolina stumble.

Pride is about the only thing that stands between former President Bill Clinton’s wife and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

-The writer (kendo@eastandard.net) is The Standard Managing Editor, Quality and Production

http://www.eastandard.net/columnists/?id=1143986619&cid=190