Kenya: numerous enforced disappearances in Mount Elgon District

TRIAL submits twenty individual cases along with a report on Kenya to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Today, TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity), in partnership with Western Kenyan Human Rights Watch, submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) twenty individual cases of enforced disappearances attributed to the military in Kenya that occurred in March 2008 in the context of a military operation in Mt. Elgon district.

Under its mandate, individuals may report cases of enforced disappearances to the UNWGEID, who then transmits these individual reports to the governments, thus acting as a channel of communication between the families of the victims and the government concerned with a view to ensuring that individual cases are investigated and the whereabouts of the disappeared persons clarified.

At the end of 2006, the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SLDF) armed group emerged in Mount Elgon district in Western Kenya to resist what they considered unfair land-allocation attempts by the government. Over the years, the SLDF increased its control over the region, driving out the unwanted population and committing numerous atrocities in doing so. The response of the government, initially lacklustre, was stepped up in March 2008 with a joint police-military operation called Okoa Maisha (“Save Lives” in Swahili). Initially pleased, the population was quickly alienated by the government’s strategy consisting of indiscriminately detaining all men and boys and torturing them sometimes to death, to identify SLDF members. Despite numerous reports by NGOs, the government categorically denied the commission of any human rights violations. More than three years after the operation took place, hundreds of men and boys remain unaccounted for. No investigation into these crimes has been initiated and families of the victims are denied their rights to know the truth, to justice and to reparations, enduring a permanent state of anguish, frustration, distress and uncertainty.

Despite being the competent thematic mandate within United Nations to deal with enforced disappearances, the UNWGEID has of yet never received any cases that occurred in Kenya. This must be seen in the general context of the under-reporting of cases from the African continent, over which the UNWGEID has expressed deep concern.

In addition to the individual cases, TRIAL today submitted to the UNWGEID a 35-pages report (called a «general allegation») about the existing obstacles in Kenya to the implementation of 1992 UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, requesting the Group to transmit the allegations to the government, inviting it to comment thereon and to undertake all necessary measures to address existing problems.

In the general allegation, TRIAL analyzes the existing legal framework on enforced disappearances as well as the administrative and judicial initiatives undertaken by Kenya and their compatibility with the 1992 Declaration. Accordingly, TRIAL appeals to the UNWGEID to inter alia:

• call on Kenya to take all necessary measures to ensure the right to know the truthof relatives of disappeared people, to carry out thorough, prompt, impartial andindependent investigations over the cause and circumstances of the disappearance, to identify, judge and sanction those responsible, as well as tolocate, respect and return the mortal remains;
• evaluate the compatibility of the Kenyan legislation with the 1992 Declaration and remind the Kenyan authorities that enforced disappearance shall be autonomous crime in domestic legislation (neither a part of other offences nor a crime only when committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against any civilian population); an ongoing crime (until the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared person are established with certainty).

Finally, TRIAL suggests that a country visit of the UNWGEID to Kenya would greatly contribute to maintaining the subject of enforced disappearances on the agenda, until relatives of disappeared people are granted their rights to justice, truth and integral reparation. Therefore, TRIAL requests the UNWGEID to solicit an invitation to carry out such visit to the government of Kenya.

The general allegation will be examined by the UNWGEID later this year.

To learn more:

• See the 35-pages general allegation to the UNWGEID
• See HRW “All the Men have Gone, War Crimes in Kenya’s Mt. Elgon conflict”, July 2008