Reconciliation in Kenya

Rift Valley Peace Initiative - Kenya

The ethnically diverse Rift Valley Province is home to Kikuyus, Luos, Luhyas, Kalenjins, and Masaai, and has had flashes of conflict at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, when large-scale colonial farming disrupted a long-standing ethnic equilibrium. The Masaai and Kikuyu communities particularly are in ongoing conflict over water and grazing lands. Cattle rustling, land encroachment, economic inequities, and divergent cultural values have bred an atmosphere of distrust and feelings of victimization among rival tribes. Because tribal identity and loyalty largely trumps Kenyan national identity, fellow citizens of different tribal backgrounds are often considered “aliens” or “foreigners.”

These simmering rivalries broke into open violence following the disputed 2007 presidential elections. In the provincial capital of Nakuru, mobs roamed the streets, burning homes and targeting political opponents outside of their ethnic group. In Eldoret, 30 people were burned to death in a church where they had taken refuge.1 As displaced people fled south into the southern Rift Valley and into Central Province, they brought alarming accounts of burning, looting, rape, and murder.

The violence left some 600,000 homeless across the country, the vast majority displaced from their homes in the Rift Valley.
Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, visited the Rift Valley in January 2008 and somberly reported, “We saw people pushed from their homes and farms, grandmothers, children and families uprooted.”

“If this web of hatred and contempt remains unbroken,” observes Mali journalist Sarah Elderkin, a close observer of the post-election chaos in Rift Valley, “we may expect to realise the forebodings of one witness to the 2008 atrocities, who told investigators, ‘My fear is not even for the past or the present, but for the future.’”

Strategies for peace
In August 2008, an innovative, multi-sector peacebuilding initiative, the Global Peace Festival (GPF), came to Nairobi. Founded in 2007 by Hyun Jin Moon, a Harvard-educated Olympic equestrian, businessman, and peace builder, the GPF already had brought its program of interfaith community service, environmental stewardship, and cultural celebration to nations on six continents. In Nairobi, the GPF launched a massive cleanup of the critically endangered Nairobi River that drew thousands of volunteers and joined with partnering organizations like the Global Peace Youth Corps to develop character education and Sports for Peace as a means of moderating ethnic divisions, particularly among young people.

Many factors, such as growing urbanization, glamorized lifestyles in popular entertainment, and modern career pursuits have all contributed to changing social mores. Above all, poverty and lack of opportunity, particularly in rural areas such as in Rift Valley, have impacted traditional extended families and bred conflict among tribes.
“We had lived in an illusion that we were a united country,” Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said at the 2008 GPF main event. “We had worn the façade of unity, but when this mask was removed we saw another face of Kenya. Kenyans came to the precipice and looked down into the abyss, but we didn’t like what we saw.”
In 2008, one hundred schools went on violent strikes, with 14 students dead within a period of three months. When asked why they chose violence, young people often said that it was their parents who showed them during the disputed presidential elections.