ACCESS TO JUSTICE AS A MEANS OF PREVENTING ELECTION VIOLENCE IN KENYA Cléa Amundsen, alumnus, J.D. 2011 University of Toronto, Faculty of Law The Canadian Bar Association has for many years received funding from the Canadian International Development Agency to send young lawyers to work with human rights law organizations in various countries, primarily in Africa. These internships last for eight months and are intended to give Canadian lawyers international experience as well as to provide access to trained lawyers for host organizations. I have been fortunate to have been placed this year with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Nairobi, Kenya. ICJ Kenya, established in 1959, is a national section of the International Commission of Jurists, which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. ICJ Kenya has a membership of over 300 lawyers and jurists. Its mission is to promote and protect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. ICJ Kenya focuses on four core areas: access to justice, democratization, human rights protection, and international cooperation.
election results to take to the streets rather than filing a petition with the courts. The general elections were held on March 4, 2013. As such, there has been a push to finalize judicial reforms in order to prevent widespread post-election violence from breaking out again. The judiciary is expecting over 500 election-related petitions to be filed after March 4. Given that there are only 64 High Court judges for a country of 43 million people (compared with 242 Superior Court judges in Ontario alone), and that ordinary court matters will continue to require attention, there is an obvious need to ensure that the judiciary has the capacity to cope with this extra work in an efficient but fair manner. (Continued on page 33)
I have been working with the access to justice program, which has as its primary objective the promotion of the general public’s access to courts both in Kenya and in East Africa more generally. The program promotes access to justice through advocating for an independent and accountable judiciary. It engages the judiciary and other stakeholders with a focus on the rule of law, human rights, and constitutionalism. This is a very interesting time to be in Kenya working on these issues, in particular given that the federal elections were held in March of this year. There were significant outbreaks of fatal violence in the country surrounding the last general elections in December 2007. Shockingly, over 1,100 Kenyans died, and 660,000 Kenyans were displaced in the outbreaks prior to, during, and following the elections. In response, numerous actors in the country have been working to ensure that similar outbreaks do not reoccur in subsequent elections. The most significant action has been the adoption of a new progressive Constitution in 2010. Kenya has also embarked on an ambitious effort to reform the judiciary, as one of the alleged reasons for the violence was that those involved in the elections did not trust the courts to fairly resolve their issues. Mistrust of the judicial process, for example, has led candidates disputing
Supporters of Raila Odinga, opponent of Uhuru Kenyatta, ran in the general election in 2007 and 2013. Kenyatta was declared the winner of the recent general election on March 9, 2013. Photo Credit: DEMOSH, Creative Commons
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worlds – few in the audience had any appreciation of her Cana- That she enjoys this new calling is evident from the frankness of dian legal career. For globally-minded Canadian law students, her speech, unthinkable for a sitting judge or UN official. StuArbour’s career trajectory is a dream. dents were fascinated to hear the former High Commissioner for Human Rights describe the UN Human Rights Council as the However, for the self-deprecating Arbour, her trajectory was “forum for the disenfranchised”, where talk is cheap; suggest the backwards. Instead of starting at an NGO and then finding a “real arming of African women as a response to sexual violence; or job”, she began with various institutional jobs (as a law professor, advocate for the outright reversal of global policy on both drugs international criminal prosecutor, Supreme Court judge, and UN and arms in response to spiraling Latin American violence. She high commissioner) before, three years ago, moving to an NGO, equated the current “conflict prevention toolkit” to a box of anthe International Crisis Group. Moving from judge to non- tiques, and suggested that a return to traditional diplomacy may governmental advocate, Arbour now finds herself exercising be called for in certain situations. something she had long sought to ensure for others, but never fully enjoyed herself – unbridled freedom of expression. (Continued on page 29) 27