Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

“I think we will not understand what is happening in our society until we listen to the tears, the screams, the pain, and horror of those who have crossed a boundary they did not even know exists. To be a whistleblower is to step outside the Great Chain of Being, to join not just another religion, but another world. Sometimes this other world is called the margins of society, but to the whistleblower it feels like outer space.” – C. Fred Alford, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power (2001).

President Donald Trump’s thinly veiled attacks against the anonymous whistleblower who reported his shady dealings with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, have once again highlighted what a dangerous activity whistleblowing can be. The US president is reported to have stated: “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”

By equating whistleblowing with treason, Trump is doing exactly what many people in power do when confronted with a revelation that shows them in a bad light – they shoot the messenger by accusing him of being disloyal – a traitor – or of having damaged an organisation’s reputation. For this, the whistleblower is either fired, ridiculed or psychologically tortured. (In the case of Trump, he would prefer that the Ukraine scandal whistleblower be hanged.)

What most people don’t understand is that no one wakes up one day and decides to blow the whistle on their employer. I am sure that the Ukraine saga whistleblower, who is believed to be working for the US intelligence services, did not make the decision to report Trump’s “quid pro quo” request to the Ukrainian president because he sought notoriety. He probably believed that US national security was being compromised by the US president and that some law or code of ethics had been violated. So he reported it internally, which is how most whistleblowers report wrongdoing.

He probably also felt that he would not be able to live with himself if he had done nothing. Now, after being declared a whistleblower, he has to contend with the wrath of the most powerful president on the planet. Imagine the pressure of that.

The media and Democrats in the United States have hailed the Ukraine whistleblower as a hero. But I fear that this designation will not be enough to protect him from harm. I fear for this person, not so much for his life, but for the grim future that lies ahead of him, even within the intelligence community where he works. (I am assuming that the whistleblower is male, although there is a high likelihood that a woman made the official complaint against Trump.)

He may find that after this episode is over and President Trump is allowed to continue as president, he will be sacrificed – in what ways, I am not sure.

Alternatively, if Trump is impeached, a bright future might await him. His bosses within the intelligence services and Democrats in Congress might make a commitment to protect and reward him, as they did with Mark Felt, the “Deep Throat” whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s downfall. He could be among the lucky few.

Most whistleblowers are not so fortunate; they suffer severe retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. Most lose their jobs. They do not receive any medals or awards for their whistleblowing, nor do they get their jobs back after they have been exonerated of any wrongdoing. On the contrary, the financial and emotional toll of whistleblowing affects their physical and mental health. Many lose their families or sink into depression. Others pay the ultimate price for speaking truth to power. For example, not long after the human rights activists Oscar King’ara and Paul Oulu released a report on extrajudicial killings by Kenyan state security authorities, they were gunned down in March 2009 by unknown assassins on a street in Nairobi not far from the State House.

Some whistleblowers do become famous – not because they want to be famous but because someone thought it was important to tell their stories. Some of them have featured in Hollywood films like The Insider and The Whistleblower; the most recent film is the just released Official Secrets, which tells the story of Katherine Gun, a translator who blew the whistle on America’s illegal spying activities at the United Nations prior to the Iraq war in 2003. (Dictionary definition of a whistleblower: a person who reports or discloses information of a threat or harm to the public interest in the context of their work-based relationship.)

Most whistleblowers end up finding out that institutional whistleblower protection policies will do little to protect them, even in institutions that claim to be protecting human rights and enforcing labour laws. For instance, no one protected me when I reported to my supervisors at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) that some $350,000 of donor money was unaccounted for. Not suspecting that the people I reported this to might have been responsible for the theft or inappropriate use of this money, I found myself at the receiving end of various forms of psychological torture, which forced me to leave the organisation. I was publicly humiliated in office meetings; friends and colleagues stopped talking to me; I was threatened with non-renewal of contract and was denied a promotion. In retrospect, when I think of the things that I was forced to endure, I now believe that the amount stolen or “diverted” could have been as high as $1 million – the total amount of funds given by the donor country Bahrain to UN-Habitat the previous year.

The cost of whistleblowing

Many whistleblowers naively believe that their revelations will earn them kudos from their seniors, but usually the very opposite happens; the entire system conspires to make their life so miserable that they quit voluntarily, or comes up with trumped-up charges of impropriety that lead to their dismissal.

It is estimated that between half and two-thirds of all whistleblowers lose their jobs. In general, the more systematic the wrongdoing within an organisation, the greater the reprisal against those who expose it. Most find that their job prospects dwindle significantly after they report wrongdoing; career pathways are blocked, promotions are denied, rumours are spread about their state of mind, which deters others from hiring them.

Most whistleblowers are not so fortunate; they suffer severe retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. Most lose their jobs. They do not receive any medals or awards for their whistleblowing, nor do they get their jobs back after they have been exonerated of any wrongdoing.

Whistleblowers around the world have consistently reported feelings of isolation, betrayal and abandonment after they have denounced incidences of corruption, malpractice or abuse of office. One World Bank whistleblower said that the culture of conformity, silence and fear was so pervasive at the Bank that “as soon as you are seen blowing the whistle, your own colleagues won’t even sit next to you in the cafeteria”.

The case of the Kenyan whistleblower David Munyakei is illustrative of the fate that befalls whistleblowers. Munyakei is credited with bringing to public attention what is known as the Goldenberg Scandal that cost the Kenyan economy about one billion dollars in the early 1990s. Munyakei was arrested and charged with contravening the Official Secrets Act. He was denied bail and taken to remand prison.

While the case against Munyakei was later dismissed by the then Attorney General, the whistleblower found himself on the streets; the Central Bank had fired him on the grounds that they no longer had confidence in him.

Munyakei spent the next few years flitting from one casual job to another. While Transparency International and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights recognised him for blowing the whistle on the biggest scam in the country’s post-independence history, he was not financially compensated by the government, nor did the awards bring him any financial security. He was clearly a broken man. He died penniless in 2006 at the age of 38.

Whistleblowing is extremely risky business in any place where governments or corporations have something to hide. It can also cause deep anguish to the whistleblower. In his book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, C. Fred Alford, a Professor of Government at the University of Maryland, College Park, provides a chilling and deeply pessimistic account of whistleblowers who have exposed corruption in high places. Most whistleblowers, he says, are unable to assimilate the experience of whistleblowing or to come to terms with what they have learned.

Whistleblowers see the truth, and that truth shakes their belief in the world they live in. “For many whistleblowers this knowledge is like a mortal illness. They live with it, and it with them, every day and night of their lives,” says Alford.

John Githongo, Kenya’s most famous whistleblower who is the subject of Michela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat and who uncovered what came to be known as the Anglo Leasing Scandal in 2005, told me that for him the meaning of “normal” changed forever after he realised that the people he worked most closely with were involved in the theft of public funds, and when friends and colleagues disappeared from his life after he made the scandal public. “It is like post-traumatic disorder,” he explained. “The memories keep coming back and stay with you for the rest of your life.”

It is estimated that between half and two-thirds of all whistleblowers lose their jobs. In general, the more systematic the wrongdoing within an organisation, the greater the reprisal against those who expose it.

Ten years after I blew the whistle at UN-Habitat I still have nightmares about what was done to me, how easily I was sacrificed, and how the perpetrators and defenders of the wrongdoing suffered no consequences (though one of them was later removed from her cabinet position after she was implicated in a major corruption scandal in her country after she had left the UN).

My attempts to seek justice from the UN have so far come to naught. I have used every official internal channel available to me to seek justice, but I have been blocked every single time. Usually my complaint has ended up in the UN’s web-like bureaucracy, a labyrinth that ensures that there is no accountability. Meanwhile, my prospects of returning to a job that I loved – editor of UN-Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities report (which ceased to be published after my departure – because I was no longer at the helm, I would like to believe) – are getting dimmer by the day.

I have since spent a considerable amount of time learning and writing about whistleblowers, and have come to the conclusion that most whistleblowers report wrongdoing not because they hate their organisations, but because they love their work and are loyal to their organisations’ mission and mandate. I concur with the writers of a TIME magazine article on the three female whistleblowers – Worldcom’s internal auditor Cynthia Cooper, Enron’s vice president Sherron Watkins, and FBI agent Coleen Rowley – who the magazine named as “Persons of the Year” in 2002, when they wrote, “Sometimes it is the keepers of the flame who feel most compelled to set their imperfect temple to the torch.”

Alford says that whistleblowers are tortured and sacrificed “so that others might see what it costs to be an individual in this blighted world”. They are also political actors in a world that has been depoliticised by euphemisms such as “development” instead of social justice, “diversion of funds” instead of theft, “national security” instead of gross violation of privacy. Ask Edward Snowden.

Quite often the torture and retaliation will continue even after the whistleblower has left the organisation. Githongo faced libel cases after he left government and went into exile and, thirteen years after he first exposed the Anglo Leasing scandal, he is still fighting these cases – which have drained him both emotionally and financially – in Kenyan and UK courts. In May 2019, the High Court awarded Sh27 million ($270,000) to one of the people he had accused of being one of the masterminds of the Anglo Leasing scam – a ruling that many viewed as excessively punitive and a chilling message to those who might be tempted to expose corruption within the Kenyan government. John Githongo, Kenya’s most famous whistleblower who is the subject of Michela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat and who in 2005 uncovered what came to be known as the Anglo Leasing Scandal, told me that for him the meaning of “normal” changed forever after he realised that the people he worked most closely with were involved in the theft of public funds…

Whistleblowers threaten the very foundations upon which power rests. The very act of whistleblowing is, therefore, a deeply political act. This explains why whistleblower protection policies rarely work. Once a whistleblower is taken seriously, he becomes a threat to the entire power structure. He must, therefore, be sacrificed.

Collateral damage

Sometimes whistleblowing can lead to collateral damage; not only is the whistleblower harmed but the perpetrators of the crime go on to commit more crimes that harm other people, especially when they believe that they can get away with them. This further damages the organisation, and creates a toxic work environment where anything goes. These crimes can even lead to innocent people being killed.

I believe that President Trump is an irrational, narcissistic, and dangerous man. I think that he gave Turkey the green light to invade Syria because he wanted to “wag the dog” and divert attention from his impending impeachment. He doesn’t care how many innocent lives are lost as long as he comes out smelling like roses. His belated call to Turkey’s president for a ceasefire is nothing but a lame attempt to exonerate himself when the war gets really ugly and he is blamed for the mass killings. (I have yet to see the UN Security Council reprimand him or Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for waging this illegal and highly dangerous war.)

Whistleblowers threaten the very foundations upon which power rests. The very act of whistleblowing is, therefore, a deeply political act. This explains why whistleblower protection policies rarely work. Once a whistleblower is taken seriously, he becomes a threat to the entire power structure. He must, therefore, be sacrificed.

As a result of this totally senseless war in Syria, hundreds, if not thousands, of people will be killed or displaced, and the world will become a much more dangerous place, just as it did when George Bush and Tony Blair ordered an invasion of Iraq without UN Security Council approval in 2003. Not only has Trump betrayed America’s Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), he has made the region and the world at large much more unstable and unsafe. Just when the world believed that IS had been vanquished, Trump threw the terrorist organisation a lifeline.

As the New York Times commented:

“President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.”

Is there a link between the Ukraine whistleblower and Trump’s decision to support this war despite having claimed that as president he will end America’s military incursions in foreign lands? I believe so. Will the whistleblower who exposed the Ukraine scandal be sacrificed? I hope not, but I do wish him all the strength he can muster to survive what will most likely be a very trying period ahead.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

On Saturday 12 October 2019, a plane carrying a high-level Kenyan delegation arrived in the Somali port city of Kismaayo for the inauguration of Ahmed Madobe as the president of Jubaland, a Somali federal state that borders Kenya. The delegation included Aden Duale, the Majority Leader in Kenya’s National Assembly, and Member of Parliament Yusuf Hassan Abdi, among others.

The arrival of Duale and his entourage of mainly Kenyan Somalis in Kismaayo broke several diplomatic protocols. The delegation did not make a courtesy call to Somali president Mohammed Abdullahi Farmaajo in Mogadishu before embarking on their journey to Kismaayo, and was, therefore, perceived as snubbing a sitting head of state. The visit reignited fears in Somalia that Kenya is trying to assert its authority in Somalia through puppet regional leaders such as Madobe who do Kenya’s bidding.

The visit also contravened a directive by President Farmaajo that all international flights to Kismaayo should first pass through Mogadishu’s Aden Adde international airport for inspection. By ignoring the directive, Duale and his delegation not only spurned an ally and a neighbour, but deepened fissures between Somalia and Kenya, two countries that already have tense relations due to an ongoing Indian Ocean maritime boundary dispute.

Farah Maalim, the former Deputy Speaker in Kenya’s National Assembly, had warned that the visit could damage Kenya’s diplomatic relations with Somalia and with other countries in the region. He advised Kenya to cut its ties with Madobe in order to foster a healthier and more amicable relationship with the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu and with President Farmaajo. (It should be noted that President Farmaajo did not support Madobe’s election in the Jubaland polls and had backed a candidate from his own Marehan clan for the state presidency.)

Kenya’s Man in Somalia

Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Islam, better known by his nickname Madobe, is often viewed as “Kenya’s Man in Somalia” because of the critical role he and his Ras Kamboni militia played in helping the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to push out Al Shabaab from the port city of Kismaayo in September 2012. Yet, despite being viewed as an ally of Kenya in its war against terror, Madobe is a man who has himself been associated with terrorist activities and radical elements that wreaked havoc in Somalia after the fall of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in 2006.

It is common knowledge that Madobe was a high-ranking official of the militant Islamic group Hizbul Islam, which was formed in 2009 by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys – who has been designated as an international terrorist by the United States – before he joined the Kenyan forces. Madobe was the governor of Kismaayo in 2006 during the short and ill-fated rule of the ICU, a militant coalition of clan-based entities, businesspeople and Muslim clerics who sought to bring about a semblance of governance in Somalia, but which was ousted by US-backed Ethiopian forces because it was perceived as an Islamic fundamentalist group that would bring about the “Talibanisation” of Somalia.

Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Islam, better known by his nickname Madobe, is often viewed as “Kenya’s Man in Somalia” because of the critical role he and his Ras Kamboni militia played in helping the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to push out Al Shabaab from the port city of Kismaayo in September 2012.

Madobe later joined and then defected from Al Shabaab (formed after the collapse of the ICU), ostensibly after protesting against its brutal methods. He later formed the Ras Kamboni militia to fight his former allies and to regain control over the prized port of Kismaayo, which was under the control of Al Shabaab when his militia and the Kenyan forces entered Somalia. (This could have been his primary motive for collaborating with the Kenyans.)

In his book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, American journalist Jeremy Scahill says that Madobe’s change of heart vis-à-vis Al Shabaab came about after he spent two years in an Ethiopian prison after he was captured while fleeing Ethiopian and American forces when the ICU fell. He then became “one of the new generation of US-backed warlords drawn from the rubble of the Islamic Courts Union”.

Some observers believe that because he already knew the lay of the land, and had similar objectives as the Kenyan forces – to gain control of Kismaayo, Al Shabaab’s economic base – Madobe was identified (and probably presented himself) as a natural ally of the Kenyans. That he belongs to the Ogaden clan, which has for years sought to control southern Somalia – one of the most heterogenous regions of Somalia that is home to several clans and which is also politically dominant in north- eastern Kenya – could also have worked to his advantage.

In the early part of 2011, prior to joining forces with Madobe’s militia, the Kenyan government had plans to support Mohamed Abdi Mohamed Gandhi, the former Minister of Defence and an Ogaden from the Jubaland region, to administer a potential Jubaland regional authority called “Azania” (also known as the Jubaland Initiative). It is believed that Ethiopia – Kenya’s “big brother” when it comes to regional military matters – opposed the creation of the Azania “buffer zone” between Kenya and Somalia as it was viewed as an Ogaden-dominated Kenyan project. It is likely that, because of its propensity to support warlords in Somalia, the Ethiopian government encouraged Kenya to work with the battle-hardened Madobe, whom they trusted more than the suave and cultured anthropologist Gandhi, who did not command any militia in Jubaland.

In May 2013, less than a year after Kismaayo fell to KDF (then re-hatted as AMISOM) and his militia, Madobe declared himself president of the self-styled state of Jubaland, which was not recognised by the central government in Mogadishu. It is believed that the Federal Government of Somalia had been supporting a rival group headed by Barre Aden Shire, who declared himself president of Jubaland moments after Modobe did.

Despite an Ethiopia-brokered agreement in August of the same year that stipulated that Madobe’s “interim administration” should hand over the port of Kismaayo to the central administration in Mogadishu within six months, there have been no signs of a handover to date. Somalia’s fragile “federalism” project to create semi-autonomous states also seems to be suffering from a lack of clarity or direction. Meanwhile, eleven years after Kenyan boots entered Somalia, there seems to be no stabilisation plan for the region, nor any exit strategy for the Kenyan forces.

Clan politics and fears of secession

Some Somali analysts and conspiracy theorists believe that Kenya does not want to see a strong and stable Somalia because the latter would pose a threat to its own national political and economic interests. They say that Kenya seeks a weak – but friendly – Somalia because Kenya believes that a strong Somali state may revive aspirations for a “Greater Somalia” that would include the ethnic Somali-dominated Ogaden region in Ethiopia and the north-eastern region of Kenya.

The Somali analyst Afyare Abdi Elmi believes that both Kenya and Ethiopia have been manipulating Somalia’s political leadership and could actually be fuelling conflict in Somalia to maintain an upper hand in the country. In his book Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding, published in 2010, he writes:

“Ethiopia, and to a lesser extent Kenya, have important stakes in either installing their own proxy government in Somalia or in perpetuating the Somali conflict for as long as they can. The strategies that Somalia’s hostile neighbours adopt differ. At a time when the world would not allow an opportunistic invasion, Ethiopia sent weapons and created warlords from different clans. After 9/11 Ethiopia and Kenya capitalised on the ‘war on terror’ and used it to their advantage. As such, Ethiopia invaded Somalia [in 2006] as part of a ‘war on terror’ campaign, albeit in pursuance of its own geographical interests. Kenya has also facilitated this invasion. This leads me to conclude that these countries are determined to block a viable and strong Somali state for as long as they can as their perception is based on a zero-sum understanding of power.”

However, Kenya’s and Somalia’s fears that ethnic Somalis within their territories pose a threat to national unity are not completely unfounded and have historical roots. In the 1960s, Somalia’s first president Aden Abdullah Osman supported secessionist movements in both Kenya and Ethiopia. Although the Somali government eventually entered into a truce with both countries and restored diplomatic relations, the 1969 coup d’etat revived ambitions of a Greater Somalia in President Siad Barre. In 1977, Barre initiated a war with Ethiopia in a bid to regain the Ogaden region. Memories of Barre’s attempts to take over the Ogaden in 1977 are still fresh in many Ethiopians’ minds

The Kenyan government, on the other hand, has been antagonistic and suspicious of its own ethnic Somali population ever since the people of Kenya’s Northern Frontier District voted for secession prior to independence in 1962. This resulted in the so-called Shifta wars that led to the militarisation and marginalisation of the region by the Jomo Kenyatta and successive regimes.

“Taming” the Somalis in Kenya’s north-eastern region has been one of the Kenyan government’s objectives since the Shifta wars of the 1960s that saw this region become a terror zone. “Collective punishments” of the region’s people by the government were common. Until devolution “mainstreamed” Kenya’s northern territories, the region had remained largely neglected and devoid of any meaningful development.

Some Somali analysts and conspiracy theorists believe that Kenya does not want to see a strong and stable Somalia because the latter would pose a threat to its own national political and economic interests. They say that Kenya seeks a weak – but friendly – Somalia because Kenya believes that a strong Somali state may revive aspirations for a “Greater Somalia”…

In its efforts to control the seemingly uncontrollable population, the Kenyan government relied on ethnic Somalis to carry out atrocities against their own people. For instance, the brutal operation known as the “Wagalla Massacre”, which resulted in the death of between 3,000 and 5,000 men in Wajir, was carried out under the watch of General Mohamud Mohamed, the army chief of staff in Daniel arap Moi’s administration, and his brother Hussein Maalim Mohamed, the minister of state in charge of internal security, both of who belonged to the Somali Ogaden clan that controlled politics in the then Northeastern Province. They were among a small group of Kenyan Somalis who were in positions of power in the Moi government. General Mohamed had played a key role in thwarting the August 1982 coup attempt, and had thus contributed to saving the Moi presidency.

It is believed that Moi appointed ethnic Somalis in important positions as they were considered “neutral” in terms of their ethnic affiliation, and could, therefore, be trusted to be loyal. Incorporating ethnic Somalis in his government was also probably a strategy to defuse any “Greater Somalia” sentiments Kenyan Somalis might harbour – a strategy that the Jubilee government has also adopted by appointing or nominating Kenyan Somalis in important government positions. Many Kenyan Somalis believe that the Mohamed brothers used their influential positions to punish and evict members of rival clans from the then Northeastern Province. Others say that in his hallmark Machiavellian style, Moi used ethnic Somalis in his government to carry out atrocities against their own people – who could easily be divided along clan lines. While it is unlikely that these powerful brothers sanctioned mass killings, they probably played into the clan politics of the area.

Clan politics is also what probably drove Aden Duale and his delegation to make the visit to Kismaayo; Kenya’s north-eastern region is dominated by the Ogaden – Madobe’s and Duale’s clan. The visit symbolised Ogaden authority in Jubaland and in Kenya’s north-eastern region.

And so, because many federal states in Somalia are run like personal or clan-based fiefdoms, decisions made by Madobe could be construed to be at the behest of Kenya. By aligning himself with Madobe, Duale – and by extension, the Kenyan government – has affirmed that Kenya is not interested in a united, democratic Somalia, and that it is using proxies to achieve its objectives in this fragmented country. The visit to Kismaayo was also a slap in the face of the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu, which is now likely to have an even more antagonistic attitude towards Kenya.

Clan politics is also what probably drove Aden Duale and his delegation to make the visit to Kismaayo. Kenya’s north-eastern region is dominated by the Ogaden – Madobe’s and Duale’s clan. The visit symbolised Ogaden authority in Jubaland and in Kenya’s north- eastern region.

Although many question the legitimacy of the government in Mogadishu – which is propped up mostly by the international community, mainly Western and Arab donors – the deliberate disregard for its authority by the Kenyan delegation is bound to deepen fissures between Kenya and Somalia, which could have an impact on how the Somali government views the presence of Kenyan soldiers on its soil. The Somali government, although relying heavily on AMISOM for security, has recently been making calls to strengthen Somalia’s national army to replace AMISOM.

The Al Shabaab factor

It must be noted, however, that Somalia and Kenya enjoyed “live and let live” relations until the latter’s incursion into Somalia in October 2011, which muddied the waters and painted Kenya as an aggressor nation in the eyes of many Somalis, not least Al Shabaab, which then made Kenya a target for its terrorist activities. Up until then – hosting the largest Somali refugee population – Kenya was viewed as a generous neighbour that came to the aid of people fleeing conflict. The decision to undertake a military intervention in Somalia was probably one of the biggest blunders of the Mwai Kibaki administration.

But even if Kenya’s intention is to create a safe buffer zone between Kenya and Somalia, the fact remains that apart from controlling the city of Kismaayo and its immediate environs, Madobe has little control over the rest of Jubaland state where Al Shabaab is still very much in control. There have been reports of his administration and KDF making deals with Al Shabaab to gain access to the territories that the terrorist organisation controls. Some of these deals are said to involve the smuggling of contraband into Kenya, as has been reported severally by the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.

It must be noted, however, that Somalia and Kenya enjoyed “live and let live” relations until the latter’s incursion into Somalia in October 2011, which muddied the waters and painted Kenya as an aggressor nation in the eyes of many Somalis, not least Al Shabaab, which then made Kenya a target for its terrorist activities.

The reality in Jubaland and in much of the rest of Somalia is that the majority of the people have not experienced the benefits of a strong central or state government for more than 20 years. The concept of a government has remained a mirage for most residents living outside Mogadishu, especially in remote areas where the only system of governance is customary law or the Sharia. In fact, it has been argued that, with its strict codes and its hold over populations through systems of “tax collection” or “protection fees” combined with service delivery, Al Shabaab offers a semblance of governance in the regions that it controls.

Where AMISOM forces have liberated regions from the clutches of Al Shabaab, they have essentially left behind a power vacuum which neither the Federal Government of Somalia nor the emerging regional administrations can fill. This has rendered these regions more prone to clan-based conflicts, already apparent in Jubaland, where some members of the marginalised Bantu/Wagosha minority group have taken up arms in response to what they perceive to be a form of “ethnic cleansing” by both Al Shabaab and the new Ogaden-dominated administration of Ahmed Madobe.

All these developments do not augur well for peace-building efforts in the Horn, which have been made more precarious by Kenya’s relations with Madobe, who is not likely to cooperate with Mogadishu or cede control of a state characterised by clan-based feuds over resources.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah A recent study by the University of Nairobi’s School of Business says that Mombasa County has suffered economically due to the government’s decision to force importers to use the standard gauge railway (SGR) instead of road transport from the port of Mombasa. The study says that since the implementation of the government directive the county has lost Sh17.4 billion – equivalent to 8.4 per cent of its annual earnings – and 2,987 jobs.

The study further notes that towns along the Mombasa-Nairobi highway have also been adversely affected, as businesses that depended on trucking – such as small restaurants, lodgings and other services that depend on long-distance drivers – are having to shut down. (I will not go into the viability or non-viability of the SGR itself, as this topic has been ably tackled by others, including the economist David Ndii.)

What does this mean for the country’s future prospects? Well, for one, small towns along the Mombasa-Nairobi highway, such as Voi and Kibwezi, might experience depopulation, which will have negative economic and social consequences for them. (On the other hand, stops along the SGR route may also experience a boom, but that is something we can only speculate about at this stage.) It may also mean that inland dry ports and cargo terminals that are near Nairobi will further reinforce the position of the capital city and its environs as the nerve centre of economic activity – a phenomenon known as “urban primacy” – which does not augur well for devolution and balanced economic development.

The six-lane Nairobi-Mombasa highway envisioned by the government may also not solve these problems because if importers are still forced to use the SGR, the towns along its route will not benefit substantially because it is trucks, and not private motor vehicles, that usually drive small- scale trade in these towns. (It also seems counterproductive to build a superhighway along the same route as the SGR; if the government’s intention was to promote railway use, why build a bigger road alongside it?)

Urban primacy – the concentration of people, capital, revenue and industrial production in one city – is common in countries that are in the early stages of urban development. In most so-called developing countries, the capital city is typically where people and economic activities are concentrated. Some countries, like India, have commercial hubs like the port city of Mumbai that are not capital cities but that do generate a disproportionately large amount of the country’s GDP, but these are usually the exception rather than the rule.

However, “primate cities” can be bad for the national economy as a whole because they create imbalances in the distribution of resources and populations that can lead to uneven development and political tensions. Kenyans’ clamour for devolution was a response to the fact that the capital Nairobi and selected agriculturally productive regions benefitted the most from the country’s public resources while cities, towns and other regions in the rest of the country did not.

Even Mombasa, a city with a long history going back centuries, and a natural deep-water harbour, has been unable to compete with Nairobi when it comes to public investments. This explains why, despite the city being at least a thousand years old, Mombasa’s population has only grown to about one million, about a fifth of Nairobi’s population. Yet until about a century ago, Nairobi did not even exist; it is an “accidental city” that grew rapidly due to a variety of factors, including being designated the capital of Kenya.

Devolution was expected to change all that, but as the government’s policy on SGR cargo has shown, national governments can still undermine the economy of a region by placing or diverting resources elsewhere.

Little town blues

Unlike many Kenyans who have a rosy image of an idyllic rural or small-town life, with birds chirping, cows mooing and fresh air wafting in through the windows, and who believe that big cities are bad and full of vices, I am a die-hard urbanist who believes that the future lies in cities. Living in small-town Malindi has intensified my belief, not only because I do not get to enjoy the pleasures of urban living, like cinemas, street lighting and good restaurants, but also because I see a clear correlation between economic stagnation and an undiversified economy.

Malindi has depended largely on tourism, which is sporadic and dwindling. Lack of investment in this town has ensured that it does not attract people with a variety of skills. There is no university or large industry here that brings in a wide range of professionals and skilled labour. So the town has remained a backwater with nothing much happening and which mainly attracts sex tourists.

Devolution was expected to change all that, but as the government’s policy on SGR cargo has shown, national governments can still undermine the economy of a region by placing or diverting resources elsewhere.

Downtown Malindi has resembled a cattle market for decades – the chaos of boda bodas, the lack of pavements and street lighting and zero urban planning have made the experience of going to the central business district extremely nerve-wracking. Malindi is what happens to urban areas when they are not planned, when there is little respect for the citizens inhabiting them, and when there is little incentive to make them more attractive and environmentally sustainable.

Malindi dulls the senses of the locals, and makes them cynical. They have come to believe that Malindi is – and will remain – a town with poor infrastructure, a crumbling paradise for them and their grandchildren. Those who manage to escape the town never come back. Promises of infrastructure development usually do not materialise, even with devolution. The lack of opportunities and amenities in this seaside town has also ensured that Malindi remains an economically and socially divided city with a small group of wealthy foreigners, a very large majority of poor people, and a tiny middle class. There are many who believe that this is the nature of urbanisation – that cities and towns cannot be planned and that they grow spontaneously and haphazardly and quite often accidentally, and so urbanisation is a process that should be allowed to evolve naturally. While this may be true – most cities start out as small, disorganised villages – urban planning and management are what makes cities liveable. Imagine a city with no sewerage system, no public park, no bus stop, no paved roads, no street lighting and no public services. Would it even be worth living in such a city? What would be the point?

In the early 1990s especially, when a wave of liberalisation and privatisation was sweeping the world, United Nations- and World Bank-types advocated for market forces to determine the provision of basic services such as water. It was assumed that the private sector would step in when governments didn’t – or couldn’t – provide basic services and that this would lead to greater efficiency. The withdrawal of the state from service provision – a conditionality of the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) – led to immense hardship in poor countries, especially in the areas of health and education. Urban decay became the norm as services collapsed or became unaffordable.

However, these believers in the free market forgot that there are some things that even the private sector cannot be trusted to handle well, such as deciding which sections of a city should be allocated to public parks and whether the city should have a sewerage system. On the contrary, given the profit motive of the private sector, it is more likely than not to view a piece of idle land as real estate that can make a profit rather than a space that should be reserved and preserved for the public good. Which explains why nearly all public parks in Nairobi have been grabbed by private developers and why the art deco-style bungalows in Nairobi’s Parklands area have almost all been demolished to pave way for ugly apartment blocks. No one tried to save these parks and houses by declaring them as part of Nairobi’s heritage. On the contrary, the authorities and powerful individuals colluded in their destruction.

The difference between a liveable city and one which is unliveable lies in how it views its citizens, its heritage and its environment. Planning is an essential part of this process. Urbanisation without good urban planning is simply urban growth.

Cities and socio-economic development

Cities are the key to economic and social development. All over the developing world, indicators for health and education are better in urban than in rural areas, and Kenya is no exception. Kenyan urban populations tend to be healthier, more literate and wealthier than their rural counterparts. Agglomeration benefits and economies of scale brought about by populations concentrated in one area also make cities economically efficient.

The 2009 Kenya census shows that nearly one-third of the country’s population is now urban, but urbanisation levels are still way below those of other African countries. In fact, along with Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, Kenya has among the lowest urbanisation levels in the world. This has implications for the country’s economic prospects.

Even though urbanisation is shifting the locus of poverty to cities and to the informal settlements (slums) within them, rural poverty still remains a problem. While it is easier to ascertain the role of the formal economy in national development, the role of the informal urban economy is not so clear, but is nonetheless significant. Studies show that African cities are characterised by informality, both in housing and in economic activity. The informal economy accounts for as much as 40 per cent of GDP in African countries, and accounts for more than 60 per cent of urban employment in Africa. This “underground” or “invisible” economy is what keeps cities functioning, and should not be underestimated. It is what pushes rural folk to cities and quite often keeps them there for generations.

The difference between a liveable city and one which is unliveable is how it views its citizens, its heritage and its environment. Planning is an essential part of this process. Urbanisation without good urban planning is simply urban growth.

This does not mean that rural development and agriculture should be neglected. The World Bank’s Commission on Growth and Development makes a clear link between agricultural productivity and urbanisation; it emphasises that improved agricultural productivity complements, rather than hinders, urban growth. In fact, many towns in Kenya, such as Nakuru and Eldoret, grew because of agriculture. These farming towns have an agricultural base that sustains them and that creates other economic opportunities for people living in them.

I would, therefore, argue that Kenya remains poor because present and past governments have neglected the country’s urban areas, and failed to see the link between sustainable urbanisation, sound urban planning and economic development. The directive on SGR cargo is a clear example of this blindness.

Cities and devolution

The 1963 Local Government Act created 175 local authorities in Kenya that were financed partly by their own revenues. These local authorities were abolished under the new constitution. As required by Article 184 of the constitution, national legislation should provide for the governance and management of urban areas. The Urban Areas and Cities Act (Revised 2015 edition) does provide for a system of city and municipal boards and town committees that are charged with the task of adopting urban policies and strategies, including on service delivery and land use.

However, the population threshold set out by the Act is too high. The Act defines a city as one that has a population of more than 500,000, and currently only two cities (Nairobi and Mombasa) have attained this population level. It defines a town as one that has a population of between 70,000 and 249,000, which places only Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kehancha (Migori County) in this category.

When it comes to declaring a territory a city, size should not matter. Geneva, for example, has a population of just 200,000 yet it is still considered a city and Switzerland’s capital Bern has a population of just 130,000. Yet these cities enjoy all the amenities of urban life.

The 2017 Amendment Bill seeks to reclassify urban areas as those that have populations of at least 50,000, which could see the creation of a lot more municipal boards across the country. However, the criteria for the creation of these boards are rather restrictive, and could serve as a deterrent, especially in poor and largely rural counties.

I would, therefore, argue that Kenya remains poor because the present and past governments have neglected the country’s urban areas, and failed to see the link between sustainable urbanisation, sound urban planning and economic development. The directive on SGR cargo is a clear example of this blindness.

One of the conditions for the creation of a city or municipal board is that the city or town must have the capacity to generate sufficient revenue to sustain its operations. This is difficult for many of the poorer counties that rely on the national government to carry out operations, including the building of roads that are not part of the national highway network. Another condition is to have the capacity to effectively and efficiently deliver services, which was a tall order even back when cities and towns in Kenya were managed by city councils and municipalities. Public-private partnerships in service delivery could be an option, but these options are likely to remain unaffordable for the majority.

One of the pitfalls of devolution is that urban areas may suffer under a system where devolved funds are used to cater mostly for rural populations in the counties, rather than to the needs of urban dwellers. While this is understandable given the marginalisation of several regions under the previous centralised system, neglecting urban areas may come to haunt counties in the future.

But what happened to Mombasa was completely avoidable. To deliberately undermine an economic activity that employed thousands of people is nothing but economic sabotage on the part of the central government. This decision is likely to impact Mombasa’s fortunes in profound ways.

I hope the city of Mombasa will not become the unfortunate casualty of a misguided government policy – based largely, I believe, on the realisation that SGR was a costly project that will most likely not pay for itself – that could have long-term and far-reaching effects not just on Mombasa but on the coastal region as a whole.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah If all goes according to plan, construction work on a 61-storey skyscraper – which is being mooted as the tallest structure in the whole of Africa – will soon start in Watamu, a sleepy fishing village and tourist resort about 20 kilometres south of Malindi along Kenya’s coastline.

But lack of clarity on how the developer managed to get approval for the Sh28 billion ($280 million) project is raising concerns about whether this is another white elephant or phantom project. Questions are also being raised about whether the building is economically feasible and environmentally sustainable.

On its website, Palm Exotjca is marketed as an exclusive development with “chic residential suites, premium commercial space, eclectic restaurants and a vibrant casino”. Three Italians are said to be managing the project: The chairman Giuseppe Moscarino is a veterinarian and neurosurgeon from Rome whose passions are “art, architecture and Africa’s extraordinary beauty”; the managing director is Oliver Nepomuceno, who is described as the manager of several commercial and investment companies and joint ventures; and Lorenzo Pagnini is listed as the lead architect.

The main investors in the project are said to be the Italian billionaire Franco Rosso, along with investors from Switzerland, Dubai and South Africa. According to the developers, an engineering firm in India will handle the structural design aspects of the building while a Chinese company will undertake the construction work. Local engineering and architectural firms will also contribute to various aspects of the construction phase.

When completed, the 370-metre-high building, whose shiny artistic exterior will resemble the trunk of a palm tree, will comprise 270 hotel rooms, 189 luxury suites and apartments and social amenities, such as a shopping mall, a business centre, a theatre, a cinema, a nightclub, a fitness centre, a wellness spa, a children’s play area and four swimming pools – all of which invoke images of Dubai or Las Vegas.

The problem is that Watamu is not Dubai or Las Vegas. This fishing village and beach resort with a population of 14,000 barely has the infrastructure to service a level 4 hospital, let alone a skyscraper of this size. MAWASCO, the water utility company, already has problems meeting the water demand in Watamu and there are no signs that it intends to increase supply during the construction phase of the project or when it is completed. The Kenya Power and Lighting Company has promised to upgrade the Kakuyuni sub-station with a 23 MVA transformer and 25 kilometres of an overhead line, but only on the condition that the developer pays for the upgrade, which will cost Sh161 million.

Moreover, Watamu is hardly a vibrant tourist destination and commercial hub along the lines of Rio de Janeiro or Miami. What were the developers thinking when they came up with the idea and how do they expect to fill up all these hotel rooms and apartments?

Other such projects, such as Flavio Briatore’s Billionaire Club in Malindi – which was marketed as “a club for the world’s richest” – also had ambitions to attract the wealthy from around the world, but Malindians have yet to see Bill Gates or the Saudi Prince Mohamed bin Salman check in. On the contrary, Briatore has threatened to sell his other hotel, Lion in the Sun, in Malindi because he says that the unattractive business environment and poor infrastructure in the town are keeping foreign tourists and investors away.

In an article published in Coastal Guide, Issue 20, July 2019, Damian Davies, the general manager of the Turtle Bay hotel in Watamu, questioned the viability of the Palm Exojca project and whether the investors will get a profitable return on their investment. “There are lots of properties for sale in Watamu that aren’t selling; who will buy an apartment in a tower some distance from the beach when no one is buying beautiful beach properties?” he asked. “We don’t want a start-up that for economic reasons isn’t finished: a partially completed skyscraper.”

Red flags

Malindi and Watamu are currently experiencing a slump in tourism. Hotels are either shutting down or scaling down.

Many Italian residents are selling their villas to go back to Europe or to move elsewhere. But there is simply no market for these properties. Those that do manage to sell their houses often do so at below-market rates, mainly to Kenyans from Nairobi looking for a holiday home.

Italian and other tourists are flocking to other destinations in East Africa, such as Zanzibar, which have not been tainted by the threat of terrorism, and which have more superior amenities and infrastructure. The idea that this luxury development will be the magnet that will pull in tourists and foreign investors could simply be wishful thinking.

At a public participation meeting organised by NEMA at the site of the building on 3 October, Mr Moscarino, the chairman of Palm Exojca, explained that this exclusive development will bring another type of high-end visitor to the area and is not competing with the hotels in the vicinity. He added that he was very proud to be associated with the tallest building in Africa.

However, let us say that the project is viable and there is a market for it, this question still remains: Why build such a tall structure in a village that is not a commercial hub and where most buildings are just one-storey tall? Wouldn’t it be incongruous with its surroundings? Wouldn’t it be like building a skyscraper in the middle of a desert? If you have to build the structure, why not build a scaled-down version?

The answer perhaps lies in the fact that skyscrapers are more about ego and prestige than about economics. Very tall structures, such as the Petronas Towers in in Kuala Lumpur and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, are a kind of phallic symbol representing strength and virility. The skyscraper is to the modern world what the obelisk was to the ancient Egyptians – a monument that projects mystical power and status. But is this what Watamu needs?

Kilifi County has given the go-ahead to the project perhaps in the belief that it will generate jobs and stimulate the local economy, but Najib Balala, the Cabinet Secretary for Tourism, is not convinced that this is the kind of project that Watamu requires. He feels that a more suitable location for the project might have been Mombasa or Nairobi. He has also advised the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) not to approve the project. “That 61-storey skyscraper on a small plot in Watamu must not be built,” he is reported to have said.

What raises a red flag is the fact that the Palm Exotjca website lists its address as One World Trade Centre, Suite 8500, New York, but that address seems to be a virtual one intended to impress high- end clients. The other address is a plot number and P.O. Box number in Mombasa, but there is no email or phone number provided. The phone number listed on the website is a Washington DC number that goes unanswered. One concerned resident who has been following up on the matter said: “When we call the phone number listed on the website, no one answers it and has not for over a year. So why is it so difficult to find the real phone number if Palm Exotjca really wants to sell high-end apartments?”

According to residents’ associations and other concerned groups in and around Watamu who have raised their objections regarding the project with NEMA, Vitamefin Limited, the company that is listed as the owner of one of Palm Exojca’s plots in Watamu, was previously registered in the US Virgin Islands. However, the Virgin Islands Official Gazette, Volume XLIX, Number 78, shows that this company was struck off the register of companies on 1 May 2015 for non-payment of annual fees.

NEMA says that it has conducted an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) that shows no adverse environmental or social impacts related to the project. But Augustine K. Masinde, the National Director of Physical Planning in the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning, disagrees. In a letter to the Director-General of NEMA dated 12 July 2019, he raised concerns about the conformity of the proposed development with physical planning laws and zoning regulations. He also said that certain issues, such as the environmental suitability of the parcel of land for the proposed development and availability and adequacy of requisite infrastructure and services, needed to be clarified. “In view of the foregoing, we advise that you suspend the approval of the proposed development to allow proper review and audit to establish its sustainability,” stated the letter.

A memo to NEMA – submitted on 21 July this year on behalf of the Watamu Association, the Kilifi Residents Association, the Kilifi County Alliance, Watamu Hoteliers, Local Ocean Trust, Watamu Marine Association, A Rocha Kenya, Watamu Against Crime, Watamu Property Managers and the Jiwe Leupe Community Association – lists several problems with the project, including:

The project is disproportionate in scope and scale, both technically and financially. The substrata along the Kenyan coast is highly unsuitable for very tall buildings. There has been lack of meaningful public participation by the developers and the ESIA team. Watamu lacks the skilled labour force to put up such a structure. The immigration of a large, well-paid skilled workers into Watamu has the potential for significant social, cultural, economic and moral hazards. The area lacks the required infrastructure, including water and electricity supply, for such a large-scale project.

Lack of sufficient and meaningful public participation is of particular concern to the residents, as it was with the proposed coal-fired plant in Lamu. In the case of Lamu, lack of public participation was a key consideration in the National Environment Tribunal (NET)’s ruling. In its 26 June 2019 jugement, NET ordered Amu Power, the key player in the proposed Lamu coal project, to halt construction of the plant and to undertake a fresh ESIA for the project. It noted that the ESIA carried out for Amu Power was flawed in one key aspect: it did not involve public participation, which is a constitutional requirement. It noted that lack of public participation was “contemptuous of the people of Lamu”.

Mike Norton-Griffiths, the chairman of the Watamu Association, says that the major flaw in the project is in the planning. He says that nine completely independent projects are buried in the ESIA, each requiring an ESIA and planning permission, and each needing to be completed before the main project. Yet this has not been done.

There are also serious environmental concerns. Watamu is home to the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, the famous Gede ruins and a marine park that is the breeding ground for turtles and other marine life. There are concerns that improper handling of wastewater and sewage from the project – both during the construction phase and when it is completed – could negatively impact the biodiversity in the region.

Simmering tensions

The above concerns were partially addressed on 3 October at the public participation meeting organised by NEMA, which I attended. A Kenyan engineer recruited by Palm Exojca made a detailed slide presentation explaining how the development will deal issues such as wastewater and even birds who could die accidentally by crashing into the tall shiny structure. (Much of this presentation was lost on the local communities attending the meeting, but that did not deter him from going on with the hour-long presentation.)

The meeting, which was attended by NEMA, county government officials, some representatives of residents associations, and a large group of people from the community, at times appeared stage- managed and intended to allay any fears that the project was unviable or environmentally unsustainable.

But what also came out loud and clear at the meeting was that the local residents view the project as a contest between the national government and the county government of Kilifi and between the (mostly British) expatriate community and the Italian investors. Speakers at the meeting emphasised that this was a project supported by the county government and that the national government should not interfere with it. “Those opposed to this project are enemies of devolution and enemies of the people,” said one very vocal community leader, whose statement was met with roaring applause from the audience.

Supporters of the project, including the governor of Kilifi County, Amoson Kingi, believe that the project will bring in much-needed jobs to the area and will boost tourism. Community members at the meeting repeatedly cited employment as the main benefit of the project. (The majority of the local residents will neither be able to afford the amenities offered at Palm Exojca, but they do hope to find low-paid and semi-skilled jobs in the luxury development.)

It is hard to argue with the sentiments of the majority of the local people, who have been marginalised for decades and who suffer from high levels of poverty and underdevelopment. (Kilfi County is among the six poorest counties in the country.) A project like this could change their fortunes in significant ways by generating hundreds of jobs both directly and indirectly. When you have not seen any real development in your area for years, despite the presence of a large numbers of beach hotels, a project like is hard to resist, even amid environmental concerns. As one speaker at the meeting pointed out, “Nobody talked about how the beach hotels in Watamu would affect turtles. So why should this development, which is not even on the beach (it is 366 metres from the ocean) be of concern?” The project has also unveiled simmering tensions between the indigenous local residents and the largely British expatriate residents. Kilifi North MP Owen Baya, a vocal supporter of the project, claims that the British people living in Watamu are opposed to the project because it will “block their view of the ocean”. But he does not say how the influx of wealthy foreigners into Watamu when the building is completed will affect the local population. Will it give rise to other types of tensions?

There is also the issue of double standards. Someone I spoke with who did not want to be named told me that the Europeans living in Watamu live there only half the year; they spend the rest of the year in Europe. “These people can enjoy First World amenities, like theatres and nice roads and pavements, whenever they want to. But they want Watamu to remain a backwater whose unspoilt natural environment they can enjoy whenever it is convenient for them. But what about the locals who have never been to a cinema or even travelled outside their county? Don’t they deserve a taste of modernity?”

The locals clearly view the Italian investors as a godsend that will bring much-needed employment and development to the area. One MCA even referred to Mr. Moscarino as “our small God”.

“Even London began as a small village,” said another speaker. “We want Watamu to become a city like Dubai.”

Owen Baya, the Kilifi North MP, told the audience that until a hundred years ago even Nairobi was just a swamp, and wondered why there was so much resistance to this particular project.

At the meeting, Mr. Moscarino gained additional points with the locals when he sold the development as a social responsibility project. He told the cheering crowds that the developers will build a hospitality school and a secondary school in Watamu and that up to 2,000 local people will be hired as drivers, carpenters, construction workers and the like during the construction phase. It was obvious that he was exploiting the fact the majority of residents are too poor and illiterate to refuse such a generous offer. His statement was met with loud cheers.

As I left the NEMA meeting, I did wonder whether if, for any reason, the project is not completed – and the promised jobs and schools never materialise – what effect this will have on the local people. Will dashed hopes lead to even more resentment?

We can only wait and see if indeed the local people’s dreams will be realised in five years when the construction of Palm Exojca is expected to be completed. Palm Exojca could either be the catalyst that spurs development in Watamu or the Trojan horse that introduces vices that threaten to destroy a way of life. It could also be a case study in how economic opportunities often trump environmental concerns when it comes to “development”, especially in areas that are poor and marginalised.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter. Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

I do not normally agree with self-appointed media censor Ezekial Mutua, who gained notoriety recently for banning the film Rafiki because of its homosexual content, but I think we should not dismiss his claims that some Kenyan music videos are so crude and offensive that they should not be viewed by the public, especially the youth.

Mutua says that videos showing explicit sexual acts promote immorality in society. It is clear that the CEO of the Kenya Film Classification Board is approaching immorality from a purely sexual – dare I say Christian? – perspective. As Christine Mungai argued in a recent article, Kenyan society is immoral at so many levels that confining immorality to sexuality obscures the many ills that bedevil the country. “If we steady our gaze on the nihilism and purposelessness that our young people have been forced – by the older generation – to inhabit, then their lewd chants and booty-shaking becomes less an indictment on their morals and more on our own,” she wrote.

However, if we shift the debate from morality to women’s rights, Mutua’s concerns could be valid. His views might be based on his warped sense of what is moral and immoral in society, but by calling for the ban, he inadvertently became a champion for women’s rights. Let me explain why. I have stopped watching music videos of Kenyan, Congolese and black American hip hop and rap artists because I find them offensive to women. As a woman who has spent a lifetime fighting the notion that women should be judged by the size of their breasts or buttocks, I find the hypersexualisation of women and girls in many of these videos to be an assault on womanhood. The skimpy outfits, the suggestive gyrating of the extraordinarily large buttocks, the focus on women’s surgically enhanced breasts are all meant to show that women are first and foremost sex objects.

In the majority of these music videos, the men are fully clothed; I have yet to see a man dangling his penis in front of the camera, yet women are expected not just to dangle but to wiggle their nude or semi-nude private parts. These videos are a slap in the face of all those women who fought for women’s rights and who continue to advocate against pornography, which they view as a form of women’s oppression.

As a woman who has spent a lifetime fighting the notion that women should be judged by the size of their breasts or buttocks, I find the hypersexualisation of women and girls in many of these videos to be an assault on womanhood.

Many people believe that the anti-pornography movement denies men and women the right to freedom of expression and has prudish and out-dated views on sex and sexuality. What they don’t recognise is that most anti-pornography activists, such as the inimitable Andrea Dworkin, identify themselves as feminists. They are not against women and men having sex; they are against the debasement of the sexual act and the degradation of women in most porn films.

A former porn star who has started a campaign against the porn industry recently told the BBC’s Stephen Sackur that the sex shown in porn movies promotes unhealthy sexual relations between men and women. Some studies have also shown that men and boys who watch a lot of pornography become desensitised to violent sexual acts committed against women; they see women as purely sexual commodities whose main function is to please men.

The branding of women’s bodies

Unfortunately, the commodification and hypersexualisation of women and girls has gained a new impetus in this today’s money-worshipping world. Memories of slavery and female subjugation have been erased by advertisers, the music industry and the media in general, who use women’s bodies – especially black women’s bodies – to sell everything from cars to watches.

The sexualisation and sexual exploitation of black bodies is nothing new. Myths about black/African men and women’s extraordinary sexual prowess was one reason for the enforcement of strict segregation laws in the United States, South Africa and Kenya. White men feared that white women would not be able resist black/African men, or that black/African men were unable to control their sexual urges (unlike white men who were considered to be more cerebral) and so would be tempted to rape white women. (Yet, black/African slave women were routinely raped by their white owners.) There was even a belief that black women’s bodies were made differently from white women’s bodies and that they could endure more pain. It is therefore sad to see black male musicians perpetuate similar myths in their videos.

The sexualisation of women is not confined to music videos. In Kenya, some female news anchors and TV hosts act as if they are on a catwalk, with each competing with the other to show off their cleavages and legs. This sexing-up and dumbing down of presenters had turned the 9 o’clock news into an indecent show. Radio has not been spared either. Morning shows on some FM stations in Kenya would even make porn queens blush. As Oyunga Pala noted in an article titled “Slay Queens, Socialites and Sponsors: Sexual Violence in Kenyan Society”, this commodification of women can result in sexual or other forms of violence, including murder. It also reinforces the notion that the only thing women have to sell in today’s market is their bodies. “The message young people hear and see is that eroticism is an investment in itself. To raise one’s sexual potency is a privilege and a currency that can be translated into real material benefits,” he wrote.

The idea that women’s bodies can be used to make money for the women themselves has gained more currency in this age of “social influencers”, who, thanks to the Internet and social media, particularly Instagram and YouTube, compete with each other to gain the most followers. Young women are now “brands” who market themselves. The more hits, likes, shares or followers you get, the more money you make from the platform and the company whose products you display. Social influencing is now considered a respectable career choice, thanks to women like Kim Kardashian whose empire is built entirely on this concept.

An article titled “How to Monetise Yourself Starting Now” published in a recent edition of the Saturday Nation shows you how one can become a rich social influencer. Among the author’s recommendations to become a successful social influencer are: “Be the talk of the town”, which includes being “photographed with the right people”; “Break the Internet”, which includes posting a daring or provocative photo of yourself on social media; and “Bring on the drama”, which means “never being too far from the rumour mill” and being “witnessed by the biggest gossip in town”.

The idea that women’s bodies can be used to make money for the women themselves has gained more currency in this age of “social influencers”, who, thanks to the Internet and social media, compete with each other to gain the most followers. Young women are now “brands” who market their bodies.

All these attention-seeking behaviours are then supposed to translate into money in the bank. Some Kenyan politicians have also bought into the notion that scandals will earn them notoriety, as illustrated by the sex videos posted by politicians or their sexual partners. The current president of the United States, Donald Trump, has not lost his job for his “pussy-grabbing” and making pejorative remarks about women, the disabled and minorities. That is how crude politics in today’s world has become.

Modern-day Hottentot Venuses

Dede Hunt, an African-American woman, recently put out a video that decried the “Baartmanisation” of black women in music videos and on the Internet. She wondered why African-American rappers constantly referred to black women as “whores” and “bitches” and why they used titillating images of black women’s breasts and buttocks in their videos. Is this what slavery had done to a people, she wondered, where former slaves humiliate their own, all in the name of record sales?

Hunt was referring to Saartjie Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus, who was a South African woman whose naked body was put on display for four years in London, where she was caged, mocked and leered at by Europeans. Baartman’s unusually large buttocks became the object of much scientific curiosity, amusement and voyeuristic stares. She was even taken to Paris, where an anatomist further examined her body at the Museum of Natural History. Her miserable life was cut short in 1815 when she died of an illness at the age of 25.

However, even death did not spare her the humiliation she had suffered while alive. Her skeleton, genitals and brain were preserved and exhibited at the museum in Paris for the next 150 years; the exhibit was only removed from public view in 1974.

Many would argue that dancing provocatively for a music video or posting nude pictures of yourself on social media is a woman’s right – a type of freedom brought on by the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s. These women see themselves as modern, successful professionals who turned their natural physical assets into money-making enterprises.

But I would argue that while the sexual revolution (brought on partly by the invention of the contraceptive pill) did benefit women in many ways – for instance, by removing the stigma associated with “losing one’s virginity” before marriage – it also did them harm. Men viewed the sexual revolution as a licence to have sex irresponsibly – if a woman got pregnant as a result of a sexual liaison, it was both her fault and her responsibility. It also gained men access to more sexual partners, which they didn’t have before; in a sense, it allowed them to have sex for “free” because neither did they have to pay for it, nor did they have to marry the woman. This resulted in a significant rise in sexually transmitted diseases among both men and women.

Unlike Baartman, who was forced to strip and entertain people against her will, modern-day exhibitionists are willingly degrading themselves in front of cameras. They are not the victims of pimps or slave owners; they are the products of a modern world where misogyny has become the norm, and where the backlash against women’s liberation has seen a rise in the hypersexualisation and infantilisation of women.

The undeclared war against women

The advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s – with its push towards open market economies and societies where money is worshipped more than gods and goddesses – unleashed regressive, conservative forces that cancelled all the gains achieved by the women’s movement. It was the beginning of an era that elevated pornographers like Hugh Hefner, who, instead of being vilified for objectifying women in his Playboy magazine, got his own reality TV show where naked women young enough to be his granddaughters frolicked with the aging sex maniac in full view of cameras. Meanwhile, conservative religious forces decided what women could or could not do, including use contraception or have an abortion.

The beauty industry, on its part, popularised the “baby doll” look that infantilised women, who were never expected to age gracefully. In her book Backlash, Susan Faludi chronicles the demise of the feminist movement and how the beauty industry helped fuel what she calls “the undeclared war against women”.

In the late 1980s, when Reaganomics and Thatcherism were at their peak, the beauty industry, alarmed by the decline in the use of its products by women who no longer cared for make-up and skin-hugging and revealing clothes, embarked on campaigns to lure women back into the sexist fold. The backlash was not so much a conspiracy against women as it was a calculated business decision to improve sales of cosmetics, plastic surgeries, skin-lightening creams, and other potentially harmful products, whose sales were plummeting.

The beauty industry, on its part, popularised the “baby doll” look that infantilised women, who were never expected to age gracefully. In her book Backlash, Susan Faludi chronicles the demise of the feminist movement and how the beauty industry helped fuel what she calls “the undeclared war against women”.

In societies where women are valued mainly for their bodies, women will go to extraordinary lengths to make their bodies attractive to the men who decide what is attractive and what is not. This has spawned entire industries where women will self-mutilate, through, for example, skin-bleaching creams, tummy tucks and vaginal tightening procedures, in order to achieve a standard of beauty prescribed by the male-dominated culture. This, says Faludi, has had a devastating impact on women’s health and self-esteem. Women and young girls with low self-esteem become easy prey for predators. The impact on their physical health can be deadly: anti-wrinkle creams expose users to cancer-causing agents; silicone breast implants leave painful deformities; liposuction causes infections; and harmful eating disorders among girls and young women escalate.

“Feminist” in this post-feminist world has also become a dirty word, and women who led the women’s movement are now relegated to the pages of history. Some, like Donald Trump and his ilk, have even suggested that such women become feminists either because they are ugly (and so have a grudge against beautiful women) or because they are lesbians (and so do not like men). Meanwhile the rape of women and girls has reached epidemic proportions around the world, with “date rape” being cited as the most common form of sexual violence among college students in the United States.

In other countries, such as India, the Bollywood movie industry has stopped producing serious films on women’s issues; instead films are rated for their sex appeal. “Item numbers” – song-and-dance routines focused on titillating male audiences – are now de rigueur in Bollywood blockbusters. Meanwhile, incidences of rape have increased in cities such as New Delhi, which has been dubbed the rape capital of India.

The backlash against women has entered a critical stage. Women must fight back and remain vigilant.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

Last year I wrote about Katie Meyler, a young American woman who set up an educational charity called More Than Me that ran a school for girls in Liberia and which became the site of sexual abuse perpetrated by one of its founders. It turned out that Meyler had no academic qualifications for teaching and her school, like many foreign NGOs and charities operating in Africa, was not sufficiently monitored by the Liberian authorities. It was only when a Liberian nurse at the school reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, among the students that the authorities took notice and when it became apparent that the girls in the school were being routinely raped by Meyler’s close friend, a Liberian man who recruited the girls from Monrovia’s poorest slums.

Now a similar case has emerged in Uganda. The case of Renee Bach has once again highlighted the dangers of allowing unregulated foreign charities to operate in poor countries. Bach’s case might never have received media attention if two Ugandan women had not sued her and her religious non- profit organisation, Serving His Children, which was ostensibly set up to feed malnourished Ugandan children. Gimbo Zubeda and Kakai Annet claim that their sons died as a result of having been “treated” at the Serving His Children feeding centre in Masese, Jinja. They are suing Bach for negligence.

Zubeda’s and Annet’s children were not the only ones who died at the feeding centre. Between 2010 and 2015, some 105 children died there, according to Bach’s own admission. Medics who have commented on the case say that many of these children were not just malnourished; they also suffered from other acute illnesses that Bach’s centre could neither diagnose nor treat properly. They died because there was no trained medical practitioner at the centre who could either prescribe the right medicine or refer the children to another facility.

What is most astonishing about this case is that Bach apparently passed herself off as a doctor even though she had no medical training. And despite having no credentials to run a feeding programme for severely malnourished children, she managed, like Meyler, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors in the United States who believed that she was saving African lives.

Orphanage tourism

Like many young naïve white volunteers who come to Africa and then decide to stay – and fund their stay by forming a charity – Bach arrived in Uganda as an 18-year-old volunteer. Two years later, in 2009, this young American women from Virginia registered an NGO in her home state that claimed to provide welfare to the needy and which also engaged in some Christian evangelism on the side. The area in Jinja where she set up her charity has high levels of illiteracy, particularly among women, and high levels of child malnutrition. This combination allowed her to hoodwink the local population and to pass herself off as a medical practitioner.

This particular initiative, which had deadly consequences, has once again raised the question of whether Africa needs more foreign charities and NGOs, and whether there is a direct link between what is often referred to as “voluntourism” and child abuse.

There is a growing awareness of the dangers of young volunteers from the West working for short periods of time in orphanages in poor parts of the world – in essence combining tourism with volunteer work. It appears that the number of orphanages in poor countries is growing in proportion to the number of volunteers. “Orphanage tourism” has now become a business, with tourists and volunteers paying large amounts of money to have an “orphanage experience”. One study in Cambodia found that the number of orphanages in the country had increased by 75 per cent between 2005 and 2010 even though the number of children without parents had declined; the majority of these orphanages were in tourist areas.

Parents or caregivers who give up their children to many of these orphanages are promised better education for the children but very often the children are kept in poor conditions to attract donor funding. This also seems to be the case with local charities run by individuals or which are funded by the government. Recently, a famous children’s home in Nairobi named after Kenya’s first First Lady was criticised for mistreating children under its care.

Many children are, in fact, actively recruited into orphanages to meet the demand of tourists, donors and volunteers – a phenomenon defined as “orphanage trafficking”. Sometimes one can accurately gauge the level of poverty in an area by the number of charities (especially orphanages) there. I once counted five orphanages in the short stretch between Malindi and Watamu, a tourist destination in Kenya that is known for both its high levels of poverty and its beautiful beaches. Is it possible that so many children in this part of Kenya’s coastal region have no parents? I seriously doubt it.

Children’s rights advocates have pointed out the lack of background checks on volunteers and say that the lack of child protection policies in many countries places vulnerable children at the risk of being sexually abused or trafficked by both locals and foreigners. Orphanages allow paedophiles claiming to be volunteers easy access to children.

Mythomaniacs

Many critics of the aid industry say that aid is not so much about making the aid recipient’s life better, but more about making the donor feel good about him or herself. That is why so many young white women, looking for adventure or redemption – or both – like Bach and Meyler, come to Africa when they could be helping poor or underprivileged communities in their own neighbourhoods back home. The Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole dubbed this phenomenon “The White Saviour Industrial Complex”, which he says is not about justice but about having “a big emotional experience that validates privilege”. In an article published in The Atlantic in March 2012, Cole wrote: “Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can be conveniently projected. It is a liberated space in which the usual rules do not apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike saviour or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied.”

And the writer Paul Theroux observed, “Because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs.”

Why come all the way to Africa when you could be helping your own people? Well, one reason is that it’s easier for a person in the United States to set up a charity claiming to be helping Africans in a country that a donor might never visit than it is to set up a non-profit for homeless people or drug addicts in your own neighbourhood, which might be monitored more closely by the authorities. Such monitoring and oversight is lacking in most African countries, especially countries that are experiencing conflict or natural disaster.

Secondly, it is easier to get away with all kinds of malpractices in Africa if you are white. Being white guarantees immunity from scrutiny. The women who came to Bach’s feeding centre referred to her as “doctor” simply because she was white. Iris Martor, the nurse who worked at the More Than Me Academy in Monrovia explained how white privilege allowed Meyler to get away with things that would have not been tolerated if she had been a black Liberian. “They think we are stupid, with little or no education, and our system is fragile, and they can get away with things because their skin is white,” she said.

Then there is the huge power imbalance. My friend Lara Pawson, a former BBC journalist, says that when she worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa she rarely saw white people treating Africans as equals. This is partly the Africans’ fault. White people in most former colonies in Africa are still treated like gods. They get the best tables at restaurants and are treated with utmost respect in public spaces. Just being white is enough to guarantee you various privileges.

And when they arrive here, they find that their standard of living improves considerably. A working class white kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Philadelphia or London will find that her UN or NGO job (which she got purely on the basis of skin colour) can afford her a big house in the nicest neighbourhoods – plus cooks and chauffeurs. Who would not want to live in Africa?

What no one asks is why we need a 20-something from Philadelphia to help us with problems that we should be solving ourselves.

The aid myth

Some of the fiercest critics of the aid industry have been from the African continent. Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid became a bestseller because she debunked the myth that aid benefits the poor. The Kenyan columnist Sunny Bindra has talked of how aid dependency erodes people’s dignity and self- respect. Maina Mwangi had called aid a “blunt instrument”. The Tanzanian scholar Issa Shivji has argued that when donors come to an African country, they establish a neoliberal agenda that essentially wrenches policy-making out of the hands of the African state. He says that the rapid rise of NGOs in Africa is part of a neoliberal offensive where the African state is demonised and the NGO is celebrated. Firoze Manji has often accused NGOs of “depoliticising poverty” by casting poverty, rather than social injustice, as the main problem facing so-called developing countries. Once poverty is depoliticised, it is delinked from the real causes of poverty – including corruption and exploitation of African resources by foreign multinationals. (You can read their brilliant essays on this topic in Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits, an anthology I edited.)

With so much opposition to aid by none other than Africans, why is it that these NGOs and charities keep coming to Africa? Well, it’s partly because we let them. African governments are only too happy to let charities and NGOs do the work that they should ideally be doing. And if the NGO or charity is run by a white person, all the better because not only will donor funds be guaranteed, but the government will also save its own resources (which can then be diverted to personal projects or can be embezzled).

How do we extricate ourselves from these do-gooders? Well, for one, by putting in place more stringent measures to vet and monitor them. The More Than Me Academy in Liberia had American teachers and volunteers with no experience in education. Both Bach’s and Meyler’s charities did not have boards that were located in the country where their NGOs were operating, which meant that there wasn’t sufficient oversight of their operations. Government inspectors did not come to the Meyler’s school or to Bach’s feeding centre to see if they met the required standards. No one was watching, so the abuse continued.

More importantly, African countries need to wean themselves off aid. NGOs can never replace governments when it comes to providing basic services – they simply do not have the mandate or the kind of resources to undertake service provision on a national scale. Only a government, or its agencies, can provide universal healthcare and education. Only a government can pass laws, regulations and oversight mechanisms that can ensure that NGOs are accountable to the people they purport to serve.

This is not to say that African governments can be relied on to do what is best for their citizens or to do what is in the public interest (as we in Kenya know too well) but to leave entire populations at the mercy of foreign charities and NGOs that are not accountable to anyone is highly irresponsible – and can be extremely dangerous, as the cases in Uganda and Liberia illustrate.

I don’t think all charities and donor organisations are doing harm; on the contrary, many have been crucial during emergency situations. But I do think that there must be more scrutiny of their operations and of their founders’ intentions. African countries should not be fulfilling the misplaced fantasies of naïve and confused white men and women who come to the continent to find themselves, and in the process end up harming those they claim to be helping.

Many countries are now waking up to the risks posed by voluntourism, especially as they relate to children’s charities and orphanages. Last year, Australia became the first country to recognise “orphanage trafficking” as a form of modern slavery. African countries should do the same.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter. Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

As the United Nations General Assembly convenes for its 74th session in New York this month, issues such as climate change, sustainable development, the refugee crisis, and catastrophes confronting an increasingly fractured world will no doubt take centre stage. World leaders will present their countries’ achievements and challenges, lobby groups and NGOs will advocate for more funding for this or that cause, and dictators will try and whitewash their failures and human rights abuses while their wives go on shopping sprees in Manhattan. New York’s 42nd Street, where the UN’s headquarters is located, will be abuzz with foreign dignitaries and diplomats, all jostling for a space to be heard.

Amid all the cacophony of voices, the ones that will be drowned will be those of former UN employees who suffered at the hands of the UN’s management when they tried to report wrongdoing within the UN, or those many thousands of victims of UN actions that have yet to have their day in court or to be compensated. A poor scorecard

The UN’s scorecard since its founding 75 years ago has been a mixed bag. Despite considerable achievements in the areas of human development and humanitarian assistance, the UN has failed to prevent wars and protect human rights in several countries. It has failed to avert genocides and mass human rights violations in Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, and Myanmar, among many other countries, even though its stated goal when it was founded after the Second World War was “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”..

In addition, the UN Security Council – ostensibly the peacekeeping body of the UN – has not been able to avert or reduce the current conflicts in Syria and Yemen, partly because the five permanent members of the Council (United States of America, Britain, France, Russia and China) have directly or indirectly fuelled, funded, participated in or supported these conflicts, and have not suffered sanctions as a result due to their veto-holding powers in the Council. On the contrary, the conflicts in Syria and Yemen have resulted in a refugee and humanitarian crisis that has not been witnessed since the Second World War, and have further given rise to draconian anti-refugee policies in Europe and elsewhere, thereby negating the very essence of international cooperation upon which the UN was established.

The UN’s scorecard since its founding 75 years ago has been a mixed bag. Despite considerable achievements in the areas of human development and humanitarian assistance, it has failed to prevent wars and protect human rights in several countries.

What’s worse, UN employees, including senior managers, have in recent years been mired in corruption scandals and other acts of wrongdoing that have made security more precarious and tarnished the legitimacy and reputation of this intergovernmental organisation.

Furthermore, UN employees implicated in wrongdoing get away scot-free because the UN Charter accords them immunity from prosecution in national courts. What’s worse, those who report wrongdoing usually suffer retaliation, despite a UN whistleblower protection policy that was adopted by the UN in 2005, and a revised one that was enacted in January 2017.

UN whistleblowers are thus forced to rely on the UN’s internal oversight mechanisms and tribunals to settle disputes, which presents a serious conflict of interest as the UN is both the judge and the defendant in every case. As UN employees cannot approach national courts with their cases, UN whistleblowers and those who have suffered as a result of UN employees’ actions, have no means of obtaining justice, except through the UN’s internal oversight systems, which are heavily flawed and biased. (For more on this, read my book

Moreover, acts of corruption or misuse or diversion of funds within the UN are extremely hard to monitor as there is no independent external auditing mechanism in place that regularly monitors and reviews how the billions of dollars that the UN’s various programmes and agencies receive are managed or used; nor are there any effective means to bring the culprits to book. (This level of lack of oversight is not even prevalent in some of the most authoritarian governments in the world.) This means that funds intended for UN programmes and projects can easily end up in the wrong hands, thereby depriving the world’s most vulnerable people of much-needed assistance.

The new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has promised to improve transparency and whistleblower protection at the UN. He has also said that he is committed to seriously tackling sexual harassment within the organisation, which apparently has reached crisis levels. An internal UN survey, conducted by Deloitte, whose results were released in January this year, found that a third of UN staff members surveyed had been sexually harassed.

The UN Staff Union further noted that sexual harassment was only one among many abuses of authority that take place at the UN. Results from its own survey which was conducted in November 2018 before the Deloitte survey, showed that sexual harassment makes up only about 16 per cent of all forms of harassment; 44 per cent of those surveyed said that they had experienced abuse of authority and 20 per cent felt that they had experienced retaliation after reporting misconduct. The survey also found that a large number of complaints were never investigated; when they were, the complainants were not informed of the outcome of the investigations.

“The results confirm that this has a debilitating effect on staff morale and work performance, and that there are continued barriers to reporting, including fear of retaliation and a perception that the perpetrators, for the most part, enjoy impunity,” admitted Guterres in a letter to UN staff after the survey’s results were revealed.

What hope is there that the UN Secretary-General will succeed in reforming the UN when all his predecessors have failed in this endeavour, and given the UN’s own record in not protecting those who report criminal or unethical practices? How can the UN claim to be a champion of human rights when its own employees have violated these rights in countries where they are stationed, and have not been reprimanded or punished as a result?

Let me give you a few recent examples that illustrate how difficult it is to obtain any kind of accountability or justice in the UN system.

Case 1: No justice for cholera victims in Haiti

In 2010, UN peacekeepers from Nepal were implicated in spreading cholera in Haiti, which killed more than 8,500 people. Despite investigations that showed that the strain of cholera in Haiti matched the one prevalent in Nepal at the time, the UN failed to take responsibility for the deaths. Ironically, Haiti had not experienced a cholera outbreak for decades until the Nepalese peacekeepers arrived.

The class-action suit filed against the UN by the affected victims and their families was dismissed by a court in the United States in August 2016 on the grounds that the UN and its employees enjoyed immunity from prosecution. Although the then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, finally expressed regret about the role of UN peacekeepers in spreading cholera in Haiti, and promised to increase funding to address the cholera epidemic, his apology came too late, and none of the victims have so far received any compensation for their loss or suffering.

Case 2: Shooting the messenger

When Anders Kompass, the director of field operations at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported to the French authorities that French peacekeepers operating under the authorisation of the UN Security Council in the strife-torn Central African Republic were sexually exploiting boys as young as eight years old, the UN’s senior managers responded by asking Kompass to resign. When he refused to do so, they suspended him for “unauthorized disclosure of confidential information”, and, in a typical case of “shooting the messenger”, they directed their internal investigations towards him rather than towards the peacekeepers who had allegedly abused the children.

Thanks to intense public pressure following media reports about the scandal, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered an independent inquiry into the child abuse allegations. The inquiry’s report concluded that the UN’s failure to respond to the child abuse allegations amounted to “gross institutional failure”. The report also exonerated Kompass of all charges. However, because his experience with the UN had been so traumatic, Kompass resigned from the UN shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, the French troops accused of sexually abusing the boys were sent home to face charges. However, in January 2017, the Paris prosecutor’s office ended the investigations into the case, citing “insufficient elements” to press charges.

Case 3: The Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal

In 1991, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The negative humanitarian impact of these sanctions was to be alleviated by the UN’s 64-billion-dollar Oil-for-Food Programme, which did not allow Iraq to sell its oil commercially, but allowed it to sell oil to purchase food and medical supplies for the Iraqi people under the UN’s watch.

However, what on paper appeared to be a well-coordinated, transparent deal, was in reality one of the biggest scams the world has ever witnessed. Reports by UN whistleblowers and investigations carried out by the Volcker Commission in 2004/2005 showed that Saddam used the programme as a money laundering scheme and that more than 2,000 companies and individuals from 66 countries had paid bribes or received kickbacks. Billions of dollars were lost as a result. Interestingly, several UN staff members had tried to alert the UN Secretariat in New York about the theft, but their warnings were not heeded; in fact, the contract of one of these staff members was not renewed after he sent a complaint to the UN Secretariat.

In the end, the Iraqi dictator was not tried and executed for the crimes he committed under the UN’s Oil-for-Programme, but for other atrocities he had inflicted on the Iraqi people. And the Volcker Commission’s report remained just a list of names of people implicated in the scandal, the majority of whom never faced a judge or a jury.

The immunity from prosecution clause

The main reason why UN officials get away with crimes such as fraud, sexual exploitation or corruption is that Article 105 (Chapter XVI: Miscellaneous Provisions) of the UN Charter accords them immunity from prosecution, not just in the country where they are posted, but also in their own countries. Article 105, paragraph 2 of the UN Charter states that “representatives of the Members of the United Nations and officials of the Organization shall…enjoy such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions in connection with the Organization”.

In essence this means that UN officials and representatives are “above the law” in every country. They do not even face the “court of public opinion”; public exposure of UN scandals has rarely led to the voluntary resignation or dismissal of those implicated.

The original intention of inserting the immunity clause in the UN Charter was to prevent governments from unnecessarily detaining or arresting UN officials while they carried out their official duties, especially in war zones and countries with authoritarian regimes. However, as the cases above have shown, this privilege is often abused.

The main reason why UN officials get away with crimes such as fraud, sexual exploitation or corruption is that Article 105 of the UN Charter accords them immunity from prosecution, not just in the country where they are posted, but also in their own countries. If UN officials are implicated in a criminal activity, they cannot be arrested or tried in the country where the crime took place, nor can they be repatriated to their own countries to face trial there – unless their immunity is waived by the UN Secretary-General, which rarely happens.

UN Staff Regulation 1.1 (f) states: “The privileges and immunities enjoyed by the United Nations by virtue of Article 105 of the [UN] Charter are conferred in the interests of the Organization…In any case where an issue arises regarding the application of these privileges and immunities, the staff member shall immediately report the matter to the Secretary-General, who alone may decide whether such privileges and immunities exist and whether they shall be waived in accordance with the relevant instruments.”

When the Secretary-General decides not to lift the immunity of the implicated UN staff member (which is almost always the case), there is no real avenue of appeal against the Secretary-General’s decision for an adversely affected party. This has allowed all manner of crimes to take place under the blue UN flag.

This kind of diplomatic immunity (i.e. impunity) is not even accorded to diplomats and ambassadors, who, according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, may escape prosecution in the countries where they are posted, but can face prosecution in their home countries if they are implicated in criminal or illegal activities.Paragraph 4 of Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) states: “The immunity of a diplomatic agent from the jurisdiction of the receiving State does not exempt him from the jurisdiction of the sending State.”

Little, if any, protection for whistleblowers

UN whistleblowers are routinely retaliated against because they are seen as an “existential threat” to the UN’s moral authority and legitimacy. Former UN employees have reported a flawed internal justice and grievance system that is stacked against the victims. Yet whistleblowers are the only “accountability mechanism” that the UN has.

In 2005, in the wake of the Oil-for-Food scandal in Iraq, the UN established a whistleblower protection policy and an Ethics Office in response to the many whistleblower cases that staff felt were not being handled appropriately. One of the Ethics Office’s core mandates is to receive complaints of retaliation from UN whistleblowers. However, most of these complaints never get investigated. In fact, an analysis of cases received by the UN Ethics Office between 2006 and 2014 conducted by the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington-based watchdog organisation, revealed that the Ethics Office substantiated retaliation in less than 4 percent of the cases it received, which means that the vast majority of UN whistleblowers receive little or no relief or support from this office.

UN whistleblowers are routinely retaliated against because they are seen as an “existential threat” to the UN’s moral authority and legitimacy. Former UN employees have reported a flawed internal justice and grievance system that is stacked against the victims. Yet whistleblowers are the only “accountability mechanism” that the UN has.

The UN’s 2005 whistleblower protection policy was revised and adopted in January 2017. However, it offers even less protection to whistleblowers than the 2005 policy as it places the onus of establishing misconduct on the whistleblower, and even threatens to “discipline” the whistleblower if his or her allegations or complaints are found to be false.

Paragraph 2.3 of the revised policy states: “Making a report or providing information that is intentionally false or misleading constitutes misconduct and may result in disciplinary or other appropriate action.” This means that if a staff member suspects wrongdoing in his or her office or department, and makes a complaint so that further investigations can be carried out, and then it is determined that no wrongdoing took place (which usually happens as the UN is adept at covering up wrongdoing), that staff member could face disciplinary action, the threat of which would most likely silence or deter most would-be whistleblowers.

The revised policy is an improvement on the old policy in that it does allow UN whistleblowers to approach an external entity or individual if they believe that the internal justice system has failed them or is unlikely to protect them. However, it severely limits the kinds of information they can divulge and the types of entities and individuals that they can approach. Section 4 (a) (ii) of the revised policy states that an individual can only report misconduct to an external entity or individual if the report does not cause “substantive damage to the Organization’s operations”. So, for instance, if a whistleblower reports to a donor that the donor’s funds are being misused or stolen, the UN could argue that by reporting this to the donor, the whistleblower jeopardised the UN’s operations as the donor might stop funding its projects. What’s more, the UN could “discipline” the whistleblower for spreading “rumours”.

In essence, these conditions constitute a gagging order on whistleblowers – a significant step backwards from the 2005 policy, which provided qualified protection to UN whistleblowers who spoke to outsiders or the media. The revised policy appears to give whistleblowers greater leeway in reporting wrongdoing, but takes away this freedom through stringent conditions, thereby reinforcing the UN’s culture of impunity.

No external oversight on how financial resources are managed or used

The UN’s Office for Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), whose mission is to “promote effective programme management by identifying, reporting on and proposing remedies for problems of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement within the Organization”, has had little success in ensuring that those UN staff members implicated in fraud, corruption, abuse of office or other criminal or unethical activities are punished or made to account for their actions. (Yet in many UN Member States, theft of public money is treated as a serious crime where the perpetrators are handed stiff penalties, including the death sentence.) In some cases, senior managers have been known to exert pressure on OIOS to look the other way in cases incriminating them.

One of the reasons why UN employees get away with theft, fraud and other criminal activities is because there is no external monitoring of UN projects and activities and there are no accessible and transparent accounting and auditing systems available for scrutiny to the public or even to donor countries. Thus it is relatively easy for UN staff members to get away with financial mismanagement and misdemeanours; an unscrupulous finance or procurement officer, a project manager or someone in charge of budgets can easily divert, mismanage or misreport UN funds, including donor (taxpayers’) funds, and be opaque about how those funds have been allocated or used.

Moreover, if senior managers are implicated in theft or fraud, they can use their authority to subvert or manipulate the evidence, for example, by threatening whistleblowers with the sack, or coercing junior staff members not to cooperate with an internal investigation.

Despite being among the biggest donors to the UN, the European Union (EU) has abdicated its role of monitoring funds that it gives to the UN. The European Commission (EC), the EU’s administrative arm, has little oversight authority over how the UN spends its money. The EC’s 2003 permits UN organisations to “manage EC contributions in accordance with their own regulations and rules”. In addition, EC’s reporting guidelines for the UN state that “tailor-made reports are not required for specific EU-UN Contribution Agreements” and that “where they meet the EU’s needs, the Commission will rely on the reports produced by the United Nations for other donors”.

One of the reasons why UN employees get away with theft, fraud and other criminal activities is because there is no external monitoring of UN projects and activities and there are no accessible and transparent accounting and auditing systems available for scrutiny to the public or even to donor countries.

FAFA thus essentially allows the UN to monitor itself. This means that UN agencies monitor, evaluate and audit their own EU-funded programmes and projects, often without recourse to an external auditor or evaluator.

This lack of transparency is perpetuated by the UN’s lack of democratic accountability. As the lawyer Matthew Parish, a former UN peacekeeper, stated on his blog, this happens because “there are no disaffected voters to de-select the UN’s senior management on the grounds that they are wasting money”.

***

So what can be done to make the UN more accountable? Following are four recommendations to make the UN more efficient, transparent and accountable to its Member States and to the citizens of the world who fund it.

If implemented, these recommendations will go a long way in making the UN more efficient and effective in carrying out its mandate. They will also make the UN less prone to waste, fraud, corruption and mismanagement, which have tarnished this intergovernmental organisation’s reputation and negatively impacted the people and countries that depend on the UN for protection.

RECOMMENDATION 1: Define the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 105 of the UN Charter in order to limit the immunity accorded to UN officials and representatives, including UN peacekeepers.

Article 105 in Chapter XVI of the UN Charter (under Miscellaneous Provisions) states:

1. The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfilment of its purposes. 2. Representatives of the Members of the United Nations and officials of the Organization shall similarly enjoy such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions in connection with the Organization. 3. The General Assembly may make recommendations with a view to determining the details of the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article or may propose conventions to the Members of the United Nations for this purpose.

While paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 105 accord privileges and immunity to the UN and its officials and representatives, paragraph 3 offers a window of opportunity to limit this provision, as it allows the UN General Assembly to make recommendations with a view to determining the details of their application. If sufficient pressure is put on the UN, through the General Assembly, Member States and lobby or pressure groups, among other groups interested in UN reform, the “details” of the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 could restrict or redefine the immunity and privileges of UN officials and representatives so that they are in line with the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that states that “the immunity of a diplomatic agent from the jurisdiction of the receiving State does not exempt him from the jurisdiction of the sending State”.

The details of the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 could state that UN staff members implicated in wrongdoing or criminal activities should only be tried in their home countries and that they should only be referred to a national court or justice system if the external arbitration tribunal (described below) fails to settle their cases or if the tribunal makes a specific recommendation that they be referred to a national court, especially in cases where the suspects are accused of serious crimes. These measures could serve as important deterrents to those who intend to carry out criminal or unethical activities while working for the UN.

RECOMMENDATION 2: Replace the UN Ethics Office with an independent external arbitration tribunal to settle cases involving UN whistleblowers.

The UN Ethics Office has failed in its mandate to protect UN whistleblowers. In fact, the majority of UN whistleblowers receive little or no relief or support from the UN Ethics Office. It is, therefore, recommended that the UN Ethics Office be replaced by an independent external arbitration tribunal that is not funded by the UN and which is not beholden to any one donor or government. This would eliminate issues of conflict of interest that prevent so many UN whistleblower cases from being heard.

The main purpose of this independent external tribunal would be to hear cases involving UN whistleblowers. Such an external arbitration mechanism would also allow those who are not employed by the UN and external entities or individuals who have been adversely affected by the UN’s or its personnel’s actions to obtain justice outside the UN system.

This is in line with the UK House of Commons report last year that made a recommendation to establish “an independent aid ombudsman to provide the right to appeal, an avenue through which those who have suffered [at the hands of aid organisations] can seek justice by other means”. This recommendation, if also applied to the UN, would provide UN employees another channel through which to seek justice.

This independent external tribunal should ideally be funded by private foundations and individuals, philanthropists, non-governmental organisations working towards improving governance, and any other entity or individual interested in improving accountability and transparency at the UN. UN Member States would not be exempt from funding such a tribunal, but their contributions would be voluntary and subject to conditions. Rules would be put in place to ensure that donors do not influence the outcome of any case brought before the tribunal.

RECOMMENDATION 3: Revise the EC’s Financial and Administrative Framework Agreement that allows UN organisations to manage EU contributions without any external oversight.

The European Union (EU) is among the biggest donors to the UN’s various programmes and projects, and so has a vested interest in ensuring that European taxpayers’ money is utilised well and efficiently. However, the European Commission’s 2003 Financial and Administrative Framework Agreement (FAFA) permits UN organisations to “manage EC contributions in accordance with their own regulations and rules”. In addition, the EC’s reporting guidelines for the UN state that “tailor- made reports are not required for specific EU-UN Contribution Agreements” and that “where they meet the EU’s needs, the Commission will rely on the reports produced by the United Nations for other donors”. FAFA should be revised so that EU funds donated to UN agencies are subject to regular audits and oversight by external organisations/entities or by the EC’s own auditors. Through the EU’s example, other big donors to the UN might be encouraged to institute similar external auditing and monitoring mechanisms, thereby ensuring that funds given to the UN are not stolen or mismanaged and are used more efficiently.

RECOMMENDATION 4: Withdraw funding from UN agencies that do not protect whistleblowers or which do not take cases of wrongdoing, including sexual harassment, seriously.

In January 2015, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill – the first of its kind – which forces the US State Department to withdraw 15 percent of US funding from any UN agency that fails to adhere to best practices for whistleblowers. According to the law, the 15 percent US contribution to the UN or any of its agencies will not be obligated until the State Department reports that they are implementing best practices for whistleblower protection, including: protection against retaliation for internal and lawful public disclosures; legal burdens of proof; statutes of limitation for reporting retaliation; access to independent adjudicative bodies, including external arbitration; and results that eliminate the effects of proven retaliation.

However, I believe that this bill does not go far enough in that it does not threaten to withdraw all US funding from an agency that does not adhere to best practices for whistleblowers, nor does it guarantee that UN agencies can be trusted to accurately report to the State Department that they are protecting whistleblowers.

Other countries are considering taking even more drastic actions against aid organisations that allow sexual harassment and other wrongdoing to continue. For example, the United Kingdom has threatened to withdraw UK funding from aid and humanitarian organisations that do not take sexual harassment or abuse seriously. If this policy could be applied to the UN, then it might encourage UN agencies to be more diligent about how they treat sexual harassment and sexual abuse cases.

Given the stifling bureaucracy at the UN, and its propensity to cover up scandals that make the organisation look bad, the most effective strategy to curb wrongdoing at the UN could be for donors to withdraw funding from any agency where criminal or unethical practices have been reported and have not been dealt with adequately. There is no bigger incentive in the UN to reform itself than the threat of dwindling resources due to donor disgust.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter. Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

I know most people are not going to believe me when I say this but, haki ya mungu, I was recorded as a Taita in the 2019 census. On the night of 24 August, a young female enumerator who identified herself as a Taita arrived at my house in Kilifi County alongside an elder of the community/area and unilaterally decided that I belonged to a tribe called Taita.

You might wonder how this came about but I can only explain it as interviewer bias—when an interviewer injects his or her prejudices and preconceived ideas into an interview, thereby distorting the results.

This is how this bizarre situation unfolded. Upon establishing that my husband was a Taveta, the enumerator, who appeared friendly and nice, told me without flinching that a woman belongs to her husband’s tribe and so I would be listed as Taita-Taveta. Now, I have spent a lot of my life campaigning for Kenya’s Asian community to be recognised as bona fide citizens like the rest of Kenyans who are born in this country or who have roots here, but to be forcefully adopted into a Kenyan tribe in this manner was not what I expected. (Note: I was not asked if I wanted to be listed as a Kenyan, which apparently was one of the options alongside tribe.)

As the interview proceeded, at some point the word Taveta dropped out of the enumerator’s vocabulary and she began referring to both of us as Taita. I told her I had no tribe and if there was a category called “Asian” or “Other”, I would be happy to be listed under it. She said there was no such category, which made me wonder what the hullaballoo about Asians being officially declared the “44th tribe” of Kenya was all about. Was it just a gimmick or a political ploy to gain votes? If indeed Asians are now recognised as a Kenyan tribe, then why did the designers of the census questionnaire not reflect this?

So, not only were Asians as an ethnic or racial group ignored by the census, but some ethnic groups got special treatment. A Kenyan Somali friend informed me that while the majority of indigenous tribes were treated as a homogenous group (for instance, there was no distinction made between a Maragoli and a Bukusu, both of which belong to the Luhya tribe), Kenyan Somalis were treated as a heterogeneous group of clans. My friend was asked by an enumerator to declare his Somali clan.

While I was still recovering from the fact that I had been categorised in a Kenyan tribe with which I had no biological or filial ties, the enumerator proceeded to inform me that my husband, by virtue of being male, was, according to the census criteria, the de facto head of the household and that all questions would be addressed to him. I told her that the head of the household could be anyone, male or female, who is the breadwinner of the family, but she insisted that in Christianity, the head of the household is always the husband, the only exception to this rule being if the husband has died or has abandoned his family. I told her I was not a Christian, but that did not deter her. (I shudder to think what she might have recorded if she had encountered a homosexual couple where both “husband” and “wife” belong to the same sex.)

A Kenyan Somali friend informed me that while the majority of indigenous tribes were treated as a homogenous group (for instance, there was no distinction made between a Maragoli and a Bukusu, both of which belong to the Luhya tribe), Kenyan Somalis were treated as a heterogeneous group of clans. My friend was asked by an enumerator to declare his Somali clan.

Anyway, I decided to let that pass as patriarchal biases probably determine most censuses, but there were more surprises to follow. I was completely taken aback when she asked me and my husband if we had purchased anything online in the last six months. With the threat of a Sh500,000 fine hanging over our heads for giving false information (which country threatens to fine people for giving the wrong answers during a census?) I admitted to her that I had bought a book on Amazon recently.

Now as far as I know, the primary purpose of a national census is to collect data on the number of people residing in a country, not their shopping preferences. (Data on the latter is usually collected by marketing companies.) These people should be counted regardless of their citizenship. The people being counted could be refugees, tourists or even illegal aliens from Mars. That is why the ID number or passport question was completely irrelevant, and in fact, as many Kenyans learnt rather belatedly, it was also contrary to the Official Statistics Act and international norms and standards pertaining to censuses, which guarantee anonymity.

My question is: if this question is contrary to the country’s own laws and to international norms and standards, why was it included in the census questionnaire? The census question about citizenship and ID number would have definitely put off undocumented people, like the many urban refugees who live in Nairobi and other urban areas outside refugee camps, who I am sure found a way to disappear from the radar of the enumerators on the night of the census.

While I was still recovering from the fact that I had been categorised in a Kenyan tribe with which I had no biological or filial ties, the enumerator proceeded to inform me that my husband, by virtue of being male, was, according to the census criteria, the de facto head of the household and that all questions would be addressed to him.

Imagine being a refugee or an undocumented person in Kenya, and then being asked to produce an ID. The fear of deportation or arrest probably saw a lot of people not sleep in their homes during the week of the census—and so they were not counted. So, the census results are already inaccurate because someone at the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics was misled into believing that this was not an enumeration exercise, but an opportunity to intimidate people and to collect data on their legal status and consumption habits.

Tyranny of numbers

As for the question on tribe, in a politically volatile country like ours, where the “tyranny of numbers” is used to oppress or marginalise people, this question, in my opinion, should have been left out altogether.

I did not always feel this way. When the 2009 census was conducted, many argued that ethnicity should be left out of the census questionnaire because it would lead to further polarisation in a country that was becoming increasingly tribalistic (and which had just been through a violent election in 2007) and because the data on ethnicity would be manipulated by politicians to promote their own interests. These arguments have been made in other countries as well, notably in India, where there has been an ongoing debate about whether or not to undertake a census on caste. Those opposing the census say that it would promote casteism in the country, while those supporting it argue that a caste census would be an invaluable planning tool to promote equity.

But I was not convinced. In 2009 I felt that the question was relevant. I argued that enumerating ethnicity was not a statistical problem, but a political one, and that the exercise of gathering data on the ethnic makeup of a country was desirable for planning purposes and also for the purpose of research. An anthropologist or historian studying migration patterns might want to know how many people of Indian origin have settled here, for example. I was particularly keen to know how many people of Indian/Pakistani origin resided in the country, as the only authoritative figure I had was one that was published over 50 years ago.

I was completely taken aback when she asked me and my husband if we had purchased anything online in the last six months. With the threat of a Sh500,000 fine hanging over our heads for giving false information (which country threatens to fine people for giving the wrong answers during a census?) I admitted to her that I had bought a book on Amazon recently

Unfortunately, the figures on Asians released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in 2010 seemed a little suspect. According to an official text message that I received from the bureau, there were 35,009 people belonging to the “Asian tribe” in the country, who accounted for 0.09 per cent of the total population. This figure was questionable because, according to the bureau, there were also 53,393 Hindus in Kenya.

Now unless there had been a mass conversion of nearly 20,000 indigenous Africans to Hinduism in the years preceding the census, it was impossible to reconcile these two figures. How could there be more Hindus than Asians in the country? And what about the many Asians who were Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs or atheists? Were they counted as Asians? These anomalies may appear minor, but they severely impact the credibility of an entire census data set. If the data on Asians appeared to be questionable, then what other data was also suspect? This question became apparent when the 2009 census showed that there were 2.38 million ethnic Somalis residing in the country, a figure that was later refuted by the government because it appeared to be too large.

The 2009 census did, however, put to rest the widespread belief that Kibera was the largest slum in Africa, with a population of one million. The 2009 Kenya census showed that Kibera was, in fact, home to slightly less than 200,000 people. So Kenya’s most famous informal settlement lost its “celebrity” status as the biggest slum in Africa (though several articles I have read since the 2009 Kenya census results were published still claim that Kibera has one million residents, which goes to show that figures are like viruses —they can spread even after the medicine has been administered).

Devolution and urbanisation

Why is it important to have accurate census figures? Well, because when a country publishes inaccurate, misleading or unscientific statistics, national policies, priorities and programmes become skewed. Millions of people’s lives can be affected by a single misleading or erroneous statistic. So, for instance, if a census shows that the majority of people living in a particular area are over the age of 35 when, in fact, the majority are under the age of 18, then this could impact the number of schools built in the area.

I understand that devolution has complicated matters, and so numbers are used to justify resource allocation, but surely we cannot in the 21st century’s rapidly urbanising world be thinking that all counties are ethnically homogenous and will remain so in the next 30 years. When Kalonzo Musyoka asked “his people” to go to their villages to be counted, he was implying that resource allocation is dependent on the number of people in a county. This kind of convoluted thinking is what has made planning in this country a political exercise, a tyranny of numbers. This kind of thinking assumes that people don’t move from their ancestral lands to settle in cities and towns. Yet many rural-to- urban migrants never return to their villages and eventually become permanent urban residents. Maybe our cities and towns are in such a pathetic state because county and national government officials assume that people who live there don’t actually belong there, and will eventually go “back home”.

Why is it important to have accurate census figures? Well, because when a country publishes inaccurate, misleading or unscientific statistics, national policies, priorities and programmes become skewed.

On the other hand, urban poverty has become an income-generating cause for many, which was why the one million population figure for Kibera was not challenged for many years. Many NGOs exaggerate numbers because that is how they remain relevant, how they push forward their agenda on the international stage, and how they attract donor funding. Many national and international NGOs working in Kibera probably used the one million population figure (which was, as I found out, completely made up) to solicit funds from donors. Meanwhile, the Kibera MP at the time of the 2009 census, Raila Odinga, didn’t challenge the figure either, probably because he didn’t want anyone to know that his constituency was actually much smaller than people believed.

But the use or manipulation of data to create certain outcomes is not confined to NGOs. Last year, a documentary on Al Jazeera showed how Big Pharma influences the way the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) senior management makes decisions about global public health crises. The documentary suggested that the 2009 swine flu pandemic might have been fabricated or exaggerated to benefit pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the swine flu vaccine. One former delegate to the European Council stated: “The WHO officials have no idea about such things [pandemics]. They depend on scientists. And the scientists are allocated to them by the countries and by the organisations that finance the WHO. And many of them gave advice and made decisions that benefited the pharmaceutical industry.”

Was the 2019 census conducted on behalf of certain commercial/political interests as a tool that could be used for marketing goods or to determine a household’s credit-worthiness? (One Kenyan on Twitter quipped, “For this government, Kenyans are not citizens, they are customers.”) Or was it a form of surveillance, much like the Huduma Namba?

It could be that I am reading too many sinister motives in the 2019 census. Maybe the enumerator sent to my house was not trained properly. It could also be that the statisticians and demographers at the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics who designed this census are not qualified for the job. Whatever the case, I would like the people who identify as Taita to know that one more individual has been added to their number, thanks to the 2019 census.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah For several years, Somalia-watchers have suspected that aid and humanitarian organisations make deals with Al Shabaab in order to gain access to territories controlled by the terrorist group. Now, these suspicions have been confirmed by none other than former United States officials and heads of donor agencies and humanitarian organisations who are urging the Kenyan government not to request the United Nations Security Council to list Al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation because such a designation will hinder humanitarian work in Somalia.

According to a Daily Nation report, the group—which includes the former US Ambassador to Kenya, Mark Bellamy, the former Undersecretary of State, Thomas R. Pickering, and the former USAID administrator, J. Brian Atwood—says that Kenya’s proposal will “break the current working relationship where humanitarian workers are allowed certain windows to reach extremist-held regions”. In a letter to the US Secretary of State Mark Pompeo, the group stated that such a move could put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

Now it is not very clear why the Kenyan government has suddenly decided that Al Shabaab should be declared a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, given that Kenya and several other countries already recognise Al Shabaab as a terrorist outfit. Speculation is rife that such a listing in the UN Security Council would release more funds for counterterrorism efforts, which could financially benefit Kenya, which is both a frontline state and a major target of Al Shabaab’s terrorist activities. The timing of Kenya’s bid is also strange given that in 2010 the UN Security Council had designated Al Shabaab as a threat to peace and security and had added it to a list of sanctioned entities that are subject to travel bans, asset freezes and arms embargoes.

According to a report prepared jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol, after losing Kismaayo, Al Shabaab began imposing “taxes” at roadblocks along routes in the hinterland that were used to transport charcoal to the port. At just one roadblock in Somalia’s Badhadhe District, the terrorist group was estimated to have made between $8 million and $18 million per year from charcoal traffic

Some Kenya government officials have hinted that if Al Shabaab is listed as a terrorist organisation along the same lines as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), this will lead to an international military campaign to counter the group, an effort which is currently being shouldered mainly by African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces, of which Kenya is a part.

Whatever the real motives of the Kenyan government, the admission by the aid sector that it has contacts with the terrorist organisation has unleashed all kinds of conundrums, and exposed the convoluted nature of aid to Somalia.

What is surprising is that former US officials and diplomats are at the forefront of stopping the Kenyan government from presenting its proposal to the UN Security Council. After all, the United States designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organisation as far back as February 2008 following the group’s proclamation of its allegiance to Al Qaeda. Subsequently, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom also listed Al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation.

Protection money

Two things happen when a group is declared as a terrorist organisation by a donor country or aid organisation. One, donor countries who name the group as a terrorist organisation put in safeguards to ensure that their funding/aid does not directly or indirectly benefit the organisation. There are severe consequences for those who break this rule. For instance, in the United States, violations can result in both civil and criminal penalties, including fines of up to $1 million or 20 years in prison. Two, donor countries stop or reduce funding to the country where the terrorist organisation is based.

Yet in the case of Somalia, these rules became a bit blurred, especially at the height of the 2011 famine in the country, when there was an international effort to raise millions of dollars for food aid. Sceptics wondered how the UN and other aid agencies expected to deliver food to large swathes of central and southern Somalia that were controlled by Al Shabaab, considering that the terrorist group had banned several UN agencies and international NGOs from operating there. (Al Shabaab views international aid organisations as fronts for Western intelligence agencies.) This was when it became apparent that in order to gain access to Al Shabaab-controlled territories in Somalia, aid agencies and NGOs on the ground had been making deals with the terrorist group; many UN agencies and international NGOs were paying taxes or “protection money” to Al Shabaab through their local implementing partners (usually Somalia-based NGOs).

Whatever the real motives of the Kenyan government, the admission by the aid sector that it has contacts with the terrorist organisation has unleashed all kinds of conundrums, and exposed the convoluted nature of aid to Somalia

A paper published in December 2013 by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) titled “Talking to the other side: Humanitarian negotiations with Al Shabaab in Somalia” explained how the system worked: “While banning some organisations, Al Shabaab permitted others to work – albeit under increasingly tight rules and regulations. With the consequences for disobedience clear, the threat of expulsion compelled agencies either to comply or to withdraw, which was seen by many as unacceptable given the scale of the need. In November 2009, Al Shabaab imposed 11 conditions on remaining aid agencies in Bay and Bakool, including payment of registration and security fees of up to $20,000 every 6 months.”

Ashley Jackson and Abdi Aynte, the authors of the report, say that such behaviour is not limited to Somalia; aid agencies in Afghanistan have also been known to negotiate with the Taliban. Some aid and humanitarian organisations resisted this form of “taxation”, but those that complied had to factor in these fees in their project budgets. Yet, these same organisations continued to deny that they gave money to Al Shabaab in exchange for access—such an admission could have led to reduced funding and perhaps even sanctions against the organisations.

KDF’s links

What is surprising about Kenya’s recent move is that the government itself has not been averse to dealing with terrorist organisations in the past, as when Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) recruited the Ras Kamboni militia to fight alongside it when KDF invaded southern Somalia in October 2011. It is common knowledge that the Ras Kamboni militia’s leader, Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Islam, better known as Madobe, was a high-ranking official of the militant Islamic group Hizbul Islam, which was formed in 2009 by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys (who has been designated as an international terrorist by the United States) before he joined the Kenyan forces.

Madobe was the governor of Kismaayo during the short-lived rule of the Islamic Courts Union, and later joined and then defected from Al Shabaab, ostensibly after protesting against its brutal methods. He later formed the Ras Kamboni militia to fight his former allies and to regain control over the prized port of Kismaayo, which was under the control of Al Shabaab when his and the Kenyan forces entered southern Somalia. (This could have been his primary motive for collaborating with the Kenyans.) All these double-dealings and defections should have been a cause for concern to KDF, but apparently they were not factored in when KDF—or rather the government of Mwai Kibaki—recruited Ras Kamboni militia for Kenya’s military mission in Somalia.

What could have prompted the Kenyan government to not only join forces with a known insurgent but even train his soldiers? Was it not a huge risk to be partnering with a militant group that had previous links with Al Shabaab? Wasn’t supporting such a group a security risk to the Kenyan forces? What if the Ras Kamboni soldiers defected? Given Madobe’s own record of defections, could he be relied on as a steady and committed ally?

Some observers believe that because he already knew the lay of the land, and had similar objectives as the Kenyan forces—to gain control of Kismaayo, Al Shabaab’s economic lifeline—Madobe was identified, and probably presented himself as a natural ally of the Kenyans, who were keen to create a friendly “buffer zone” in Jubbaland in southern Somalia. His Ogaden clan, which has for years sought to control southern Somalia, and which is also politically dominant in northeastern Kenya, could have also worked to his advantage.

It is important to note that the Kenyan government did not seek UN Security Council approval before it invaded Somalia. Kenyans were told that the operation was merely an “incursion” that had the blessing of the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu and which was aimed at ousting Al Shabaab from areas along Kenya’s border with Somalia. It is ironic that the Kenyan government is now seeking the UN Security Council’s support.

The hypocrisy of the Kenyan government vis-à-vis the UN Security Council was further exposed when KDF were re-hatted as AMISOM. In September 2012, almost one year after the Kenyan invasion, when Kismaayo, the prized port that was Al Shabaab’s main economic base, fell to the Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces, rumours began to emerge of Kenyan and Ras Kamboni soldiers exporting charcoal from the port, despite a UN Security Council ban.

Apparently, when the Kenyan and Somali forces entered Kismaayo, they discovered an estimated four million sacks of charcoal with an international market value of at least $60 million lined up by Al Shabaab and ready for export. In its report to the UN Security Council, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea claimed that the Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces decided to export the charcoal despite the UN ban, and that the export of charcoal more than doubled under their watch.

The Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces, like Al Shabaab, it seemed, had turned Kismaayo into a cash cow. The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea estimated that charcoal worth $250 million was shipped from Somalia in 2013 and 2014, and that an average of 20 trucks, each carrying 5 to 12 tonnes of charcoal, were arriving in Kismaayo every day.

Kenya thus has to contend with the fact that the UN Security Council may not be holding a favourable view of Kenyan forces in Somalia because KDF might, in fact, be funding Al Shabaab. In its 2014 report to the UN Security Council, the UN Monitoring Group also made the astonishing claim that profits from the port of Kismaayo, which were made through taxes, charcoal exports and the importation of cheap sugar, were equally divided between the Kenyan forces, the Interim Jubbaland Administration headed by Ahmed Madobe, and Al Shabaab—suggesting that KDF’s presence in Somalia had not affected Al Shabaab’s ability to raise funds; on the contrary, KDF might have been aiding the terrorist group’s income-generating activities.

These claims were also supported by a report by the US-funded Institute of Defence Analyses, which was cited by the Sunday Nation in an article published on 27 July 2014, which stated: “Kenya, although formally a participant in AMISOM, which operates in support of the Somali national government, is also complicit in support of trade that provides income to Al Shabaab, its military opponent, both inside Somalia, and, increasingly, at home in Kenya.”

According to a report prepared jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol, after losing Kismaayo, Al Shabaab began imposing “taxes” at roadblocks along routes in the hinterland that were used to transport charcoal to the port. At just one roadblock in Somalia’s Badhadhe District, the terrorist group was estimated to have made between $8 million and $18 million per year from charcoal traffic. Christian Hellemann, the principal analyst for the report, likened the charcoal trade in Somalia to the drug wars in Mexico in terms of the violence and the amounts of money involved.

An anonymous source who spoke to the Saturday Nation claimed that smuggled sugar was also a major source of income for Al Shabaab and KDF. There were five checkpoints between Kismaayo and the Kenyan town of Garissa; three of them were controlled by Al Shabaab and two by the Kenyan forces. “The sugar trucks are waved through all the checkpoints without any checks,” said the source. “There is a tacit agreement between the owner and these entities and we are sure hefty sums of money change hands in the form of illegal ‘taxes’,” stated the source, who was cited in the article published on 25 April 2015.

These reports were corroborated by other investigations that indicated that about 70 businessmen located in Kismaayo, Nairobi and Garissa were brokers in the sugar trade between Somalia and Kenya.

In other words, Kenyan forces were implicated in aiding Al Shabaab materially. Yet no sanctions have been placed on the Kenyan government or KDF and none of these allegations have affected how Kenyan forces in Somalia are viewed at home. In fact, reports about KDF’s involvement in the illicit charcoal and other trades in Somalia are largely ignored.

Maritime dispute

So what could be behind this new-found urgency on the part of the Kenyan government to compel the UN Security Council to declare Al Shabaab a terrorist organisation? After all, if sanctions are imposed on Kenya as a result of its own alleged affiliation with Al Shabaab, then will Kenya not be the ultimate loser?

Analysts believe that there must be something else behind Kenya’s diplomatic efforts at the UN. “It may have something to do with the maritime dispute between Kenya and Somalia because the Kenyan government is not going to accept a negative result from the court,” says Andrew Franklin, a Nairobi-based security analyst.

Kenya is currently in a legal dispute with Somalia over a maritime boundary along its border—a 100,000 square metre triangular chunk of the Indian Ocean that is suspected to be rich in oil. The International Court of Justice is expected to announce its decision on the dispute soon. It is possible that the Kenyan government is using the Al Shabaab threat to put additional pressure on the Federal Government of Somalia to withdraw the case against Kenya. Maybe Kenya believes that the listing of Al Shabaab as a terrorist organisation could lead to the imposition of UN sanctions on countries that harbour terrorists, in this case, Somalia. Having been weakened by the UN sanctions, Mogadishu might then consider negotiating with Nairobi on the border dispute. (The distribution of oil wealth will no doubt determine the content of any such negotiations.)

But there might be other considerations as well. Kenya has been unsuccessful in bringing back two Cuban doctors working in Kenya who were abducted by Al Shabaab in April this year from the border town of Mandera and taken to Somalia. Perhaps pressure from the Cuban government might have prompted the Kenyan government (which made a deal with Cuba to bring in the Cuban doctors, a decision that has irked Kenyan doctors who have failed to negotiate better terms for themselves with the government for years) to make it look like it is doing something about the Al Shabaab menace, hence the proposal to the UN Security Council.

Meanwhile, Al Shabaab, not one to let an opportunity go to waste, has apparently been using the medical services of the Cuban doctors. “There are rumours that the Cubans are treating Al Shabaab fighters and the general civilian population,” says Franklin. How ironic will it be if these Cuban doctors, when finally released, are charged with aiding a terrorist organisation?

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter. Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” – Toni Morrison

A writer who had a significant impact on how I viewed the African-American experience has died. Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate and author of The Bluest Eye, Sulu, and Beloved, among many other books, has passed on at the age of 88.

I read Beloved – a novel that explores the brutality of slavery in America – on the insistence of my friend Betty Wamalwa (also known as Sitawa Namwalie), who thrust the book in my hand when we were both in our 20s and demanded that I read it. The book shook me to the core. It is remarkable in that while it exposes the powerlessness and pain of generations of slaves, it also portrays slaves as deeply human, capable of love, hate, anger and empathy. But this love had to be measured, and taken in small sips, because slaves were even denied this right. So slaves learnt to “love small”, which was both a survival instinct and a form of self-preservation. However, while slavery emasculated slaves, it did not take away their humanity.

There are many passages in Beloved that left me speechless. Like the one of Paul D, a character in Beloved, describing what loving means to a slave who is denied the right and the permission to love by “men who knew their manhood lay in their guns”:

“And these men who made even vixen laugh, could, if you let them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight. So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Grass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn’t do. A woman, a child, a brother – a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred Georgia.”

Morrison defined freedom as “a place where you could love anything you chose, not need permission for desire”.

Throughout her body of work, you could feel the rhythms of her slave ancestors. Morrison lifted the English language into a world that had its roots in her African heritage. Quite often the rhythmic music of her words would break into a wail, as in this haunting passage from Beloved:

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind – wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

Loneliness is a common theme in her female-centric books – the loneliness of slavery and bondage, the loneliness of not being understood, the loneliness that comes with being a writer, especially a female writer of colour who has to maneuver a white literary establishment that is generally hostile to black authors.

Born to a father who worked as a welder and a mother who was a domestic worker, Chloe Anthony Wofford, who would later be known as Toni Morrison, like her contemporary, James Baldwin (whose collected essays she edited for the Library of America), was the embodiment of a black American writer who dissects society with the stealth and precision of surgeon. She laid bare all the sicknesses of her society, especially racism, then proceeded to cut them up into pieces through words and language.

She was particularly disturbed by racism, which she described as “a social construct” and an “insult”. She believed that the main function of racism was distraction – to keep black people so busy explaining themselves to white people that they would not have time for anything else:

“It [racism] keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary.”

Early in her career, Morrison taught at Howard University, where she met her husband, Harold Morrison, a Jamaican, with whom she had two sons. She later became a professor at Princeton University and then worked as an editor at Random House.

For her literary efforts and achievements, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1988, amid much controversy. Her detractors and critics claimed that the Swedish Academy was trying to be politically correct by awarding the prize to a black woman, and that her work did not merit such an award. Her response to accusations of political correctness was: “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”

One of the criticisms levelled against Morrison was that you had to be black to understand her novels, hence they lacked universal appeal. Often she was asked when she would write a novel where the main characters were ordinary white people, which she usually dismissed as a racist question because no one asks white authors why they do not write about black or non-white people. She also viewed such questions as a form of censorship because they assumed that writers seek the approval and permission of readers before they embark on writing a book.

However, she was also aware that her books would appeal to people like her who do not see characters like themselves reflected in novels.“I’m writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year old coloured girl from Lorain, Ohio,” she said.“I don’t have to apologise or consider myself limited because I don’t write about white people – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books. The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it.”

The question about who a writer writes for also becomes irrelevant at some point. Most writers don’t write with a particular reader in mind, just as an orchestra recording classical music doesn’t think about who will buy its album when it is eventually released.J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series could as easily appeal to a child growing up in the British countryside as it could to a child living in a city in Bangladesh. If Morrison wrote only for black men and women living in America, then how is it that her books resonated with a woman of Indian heritage living in Kenya? Surely, her books’ appeal was universal.

Yet, it is ironic that nearly thirty years after Morrison won the Nobel Prize, racism has remained stronger than ever in the United States. Donald Trump would agree with Morrison, who once said that “American means white” (though he probably wouldn’t notice the cynicism in her comment).

The literary world has lost yet another icon. Another healer of wounds is no longer with us. But Morrison’s language and words will always comfort us, especially in these trying times when extremism, hate and paranoia are fragmenting societies and spreading fear. As Morrison noted, language has the power to heal. “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names,” she said. “Language alone is meditation.”

Morrison believed that something beautiful can emerge even out of pain. “I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore the pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.”

Born: 1931 – Died:2019

Rest In Peace

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter. Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah

In the run-up to the August 2017 elections, the Star newspaper carried a short news item in its inside pages that stated the Jubilee Party had contracted a company known as Cambridge Analytica to help it win the elections. Most of the other Kenyan mainstream media outlets ignored the story, which seemed strange considering that the company was embroiled in various scandals that suggested that it had manipulated British voters in the Brexit referendum, and that it might have used unethical means to get Donald Trump elected as President of the United States in 2016. Steve Bannon, who was then Trump’s chief strategist, was the company’s Vice President at the time of the Brexit referendum.

The company, owned by billionaire Robert Mercer, was known for running campaigns that amounted to “psychological warfare”. Some claimed that the data mining company’s operations might even be construed as being illegal as they crossed boundaries of privacy that should not be allowed in a democracy.

I subsequently wrote in my column in the Daily Nation about how this company might be manipulating voters in the 2017 Kenyan election, but my column did not generate much interest among my fellow journalists, even though I had warned Kenyans that this controversial company’s dirty tactics amounted to social engineering and could lead to the spread of hate speech and fake news during the election campaign period.

Not even an explosive exposé of the unethical practices employed by the company, which was published a year later in the UK’s Guardian and Observer newspapers, led to further investigations by the Kenyan media or by Kenya’s electoral body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). It was as if Cambridge Analytica, despite its tarnished reputation, had successfully managed to buy the silence of Kenyan journalists and electoral officials.

The Kenyan media’s puzzling lack of interest in Cambridge Analytica’s dirty tactics was mind- boggling. No Kenyan journalist or electoral body official investigated whether the company was behind the uthamaki movement that saw Uhuru Kenyatta win by a landslide in Central Kenya. No one bothered to find out whether the company was behind a social media campaign to instil fear about a Raila Odinga presidency – and Luos in general – even though undercover reporters in the UK had recorded the company’s top managers admitting that they dug the dirt on their clients’ political opponents, and often hired spies and sex workers to obtain potentially embarrassing information. What dirt did they have on Kenya’s opposition leaders? And was the fear of this dirt being exposed a reason for the “golden handshake” between Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta last year? Again, no one to date has bothered to find out.

Dirty tactics

The unethical tactics employed by Cambridge Analytica were revealed last year by the whistleblower Christopher Rylie, who claimed the company harvested Facebook data from millions of people around the world and then targeted them with political messages and misinformation without their knowledge or consent.

This was confirmed by a series of articles known as “The Cambridge Analytica Files” published in the Observer, which showed that Cambridge Analytica used data from sites such as Facebook to manipulate people’s emotions, and get them to vote in a particular way. One former employee told journalist Carole Cadwalladr — the author of the series — that the aim of the company was to capture every voter’s information environment, from magazine subscriptions to airline bookings, and to use this data to craft individual messages to create an “alt-right news and information ecosystem”.

The unethical tactics employed by Cambridge Analytica were revealed last year by the whistleblower Christopher Rylie, who claimed that the company harvested Facebook data from millions of people around the world and then targeted them with political messages and misinformation without their knowledge or consent.

Cadwalladr says that Cambridge Analytica’s tactics were not just about combining social psychology with data analytics – they were much more sinister. The company was not ideologically neutral and had strong links with well-heeled right-wing groups and politicians in Britain, the United States, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova. Its campaigns thus propagated a distinctly ultra-right agenda. Later investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia prior to the 2016 elections also raised the question about whether Cambridge Analytica facilitated these links.

These revelations led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitting that 87 million Facebook users’ data had been mined. He was subsequently hauled before the US Congress and fined $5 billion for privacy violations. Britain’s parliament referred to Facebook as “digital gangsters” and the UK government has since started an antitrust inquiry into the company. France, Australia, Japan, India, New Zealand and Singapore are also considering passing new laws to regulate giant Internet platforms like Facebook. The Cambridge Analytica scandal not only impacted the fortunes of Facebook, whose share prices plummeted, but also Cambridge Analytica, which went bankrupt and was forced to shut down. However, in Kenya, no inquiry into Facebook or Cambridge Analytica took place and no laws or regulations to protect people’s online privacy have been passed.

Why now?

Having ignored this story for so long, it seems odd that now, nearly two years after the 2017 election, the Daily Nation’s editors feel that news about a high-profile British MP admitting to the UK’s Channel 4 News that she worked for Cambridge Analytica in Jubilee’s election campaign in 2017 deserves front-page treatment. In its 17 July 2019 edition, the Daily Nation splashed the story of Alexandra Phillips telling a journalist that she was secretly employed by Uhuru Kenyatta as a political communications consultant. The newspaper also carried a photo of Phillips donning a Jubilee cap. In the leaked video clip where she admitted to working for Jubilee, Phillips also said that she loved Kenya. (Why wouldn’t she? Her contract was valued at £300,000 per month and her job description, she claims, including writing speeches for Uhuru.)

The Jubilee Party denied any links with Cambridge Analytica, but a few days later, in its Sunday edition, the Nation revealed that it had seen leaked emails that linked State House operative Nancy Gitau with the disgraced company. Apparently all communication between Cambridge Analytica’s consultants working in Kenya had to be copied to Ms. Gitau, who also offered suggestions on how the election campaign should be conducted.

Why did this story merit newspaper space and why now? Perhaps it has to do with the politics of the 2022 elections. Uhuru Kenyatta will not be running in these elections, as he will have come to the end of his second and final term. Moreover, the Jubilee Party is no longer what it was, with the in- fighting between the two principal parties of this coalition becoming more vicious by the day. So a story like this is not likely to have any significant impact on the 2022 elections. And it will also have no effect on the fortunes of Cambridge Analytica, which has already closed shop, thanks to the many scandals it was embroiled in. Which is why it seems odd that the Nation chose to highlight this story now.

The Jubilee Party denied any links with Cambridge Analytica, but a few days later, in its Sunday edition, the Nation revealed that it had seen leaked emails that linked State House operative Nancy Gitau with the disgraced company.

But what the story did reveal was the extent to which Uhuru Kenyatta and his Jubilee Party were willing to go to win the 2013 and 2017 elections. Uhuru is not averse to paying foreign PR companies huge amounts of money to manipulate voters and the media. In the run-up to the 2013 elections, when he was facing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC), he hired the services of a London-based PR firm called BTP Advisers to manage his election campaign. The PR company, whose slogan is “We deliver campaigns that change hearts and minds”, advised Uhuru to use aggressive propaganda tactics that cast the ICC as racist and its supporters, including local civil society organisations (which his propagandists dubbed “the evil society”), as puppets of the West.

On its website, BTP Advisers revealed the winning strategy that delivered the presidency to Uhuru in 2013: “By exposing the weak and flawed nature of the ICC case against him, we made the election a choice about whether Kenyans would decide their own future or have it dictated to them by others.” By framing the ICC cases as a sovereignty issue for Kenyans, the strategy cleverly undermined both the ICC and the case against Kenyatta. As fate would have it, the ICC would later drop charges against Kenyatta and his fellow indictee and running mate William Ruto due to lack of sufficient evidence.

Uhuru also hired a group of bloggers and journalists dubbed “The State House Boys” who carried out an aggressive propaganda campaign on social and other digital media to whitewash Uhuru and his party. The so-called Presidential Strategic Communications Unit was built by Johnson Sakaja – a young man with political ambitions who would later become Senator for Nairobi County – who recruited the likes of Dennis Itumbi and David Nzioka to build Brand Uhuru. Although this roguish bunch of propagandists have since been sidelined and now work for Deputy President William Ruto, their vitriolic rhetoric and misinformation campaign had a lasting impact on the 2013 and 2017 elections.

Digital surveillance

Did President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Jubilee party win the 2013 and 2017 elections fairly, or did a UK-based political consultancy company called Cambridge Analytica help them win by using unethical means? This question surfaced again after the release of an explosive documentary aired on the UK’s Channel 4 News in 2018 that showed the managing director of the company, Mark Turnbull, admitting to stage-managing the last two elections in Kenya, from rebranding the Jubilee party twice and even writing its manifesto and speeches. In the Channel 4 News documentary, Turnbull is shown telling undercover reporters that the company uses people’s deep-seated hopes and fears to manipulate them. “It is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it is all about emotion,” he said.

The question Kenyans must ask is whether Cambridge Analytica undermined our democracy and made a mockery of our elections. Is the company responsible for deepening ethnic divisions in our society? The deliberate manipulation of people’s fears and emotions also raises ethical questions. In a country like Kenya, where ethnic-based tensions have led to violence and bloodshed in the past, was Cambridge Analytica being highly irresponsible by stoking these tensions?

Other African countries have been more diligent about employing companies that create divisions and disseminate misinformation. For example, in the wake of the corruption and “state capture” scandals involving former South African president Jacob Zuma and the notorious Gupta family, the UK-based PR company Bell Pottinger was accused of initiating a cynical campaign on behalf of the Guptas that pitted South Africa’s whites against blacks. When details of the “economic apartheid” campaign were exposed, the PR company lost credibility and collapsed. But in Kenya, not a single investigation has been conducted to expose the unethical actions Cambridge Analytica was involved in that might have impacted our elections and polarised the country along ethnic lines.

The question Kenyans must ask is whether Cambridge Analytica undermined our democracy and made a mockery of our elections.

Going forward, can we expect similar campaigns in the run-up to the 2022 election? Are there other companies such as Cambridge Analytica that are marketing themselves to Kenyan politicians? Such companies have found a ready market in poor and corrupt countries where leaders will go to any length (and pay millions) to win elections. Might Ruto, the presidential candidate in 2022, also hire a company like Cambridge Analytica for his election campaign? Ruto has loads of money and the contest in 2022 will very likely be a high stakes game. Cambridge Analytica may have closed shop, but other companies might be waiting in the wings to make money during the 2022 election campaign period? Might they now have their eyes on Ruto? And will the Kenyan media be more diligent about such companies or will they wait for foreign media to expose them?

We must also ask whether the introduction of the Huduma Namba (the newly rolled-out National Integrated Identity Management System) in the absence of regulations that protect privacy could also impact the elections. Could the personal biometric and other data that has been captured by the Huduma Namba be manipulated by electoral officials? Was electoral official Chris Msando’s murder prior to the 2017 elections linked to his knowledge of such a scheme?

We live in scary times. Information technology, which was once viewed as “the great leveler” that would deliver true democracy to the world’s people, is now being used to manipulate elections, subvert democracy, and promote authoritarianism.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.

Trump, Ukraine, and the Whistleblower: Why Reporting Wrongdoing Remains a Perilous Activity

By Rasna Warah In June this year, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, made a startling statement that is not usually heard within the hallowed chambers of the UN. Not only did she implicate a rich member state in the killing of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, she also castigated the UN for not doing enough to address the issue.

Callamard told the UN Human Rights Council, whose members include Saudi Arabia, that Khashoggi’s murder “constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the State of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible”, implying that Saudi prince Mohamed bin Salman, the de facto head of the Saudi kingdom, may have played a crucial role in the brutal murder of the journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. She also criticised the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for failing to demand accountability for the murder of the journalist, adding that “the silence of this intergovernmental body and lack of measures were a disservice to the UN and to the world”. (Although Callamard reports to the UN, she is not a UN staff member.)

The UN rapporteur argued that because the UN has remained quiet on the killing of the journalist, who had been a critic of the regime in Saudi Arabia, it has put at risk the lives of all journalists and has violated its own mandate to protect freedom of speech and expression. Journalists and human rights activists around the world had said that the killing of the journalist was a direct assault on freedom of the press. She called on the UN and its member states to carry out an international criminal investigation on the murder.

The UN Secretary-General responded that the only way to carry out such an investigation was through a UN Security Council resolution sanctioned by the Council’s five permanent members, namely the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. However, this is highly unlikely because at least one of these members – the United States – has been reluctant to push investigations into the murder further. President Donald Trump, who is more keen on selling arms to Saudi Arabia rather than on ensuring that human rights are respected, has been lukewarm about Khashoggi’s murder, and has even hinted on several occasions that doing business with the Saudis is more in the US national interest than ensuring that justice for Khashoggi is done. Callamard claims that the US government did little to assist her investigation, and that she was not granted access to the CIA or the US Department of Justice. The UN Secretary-General responded that the only way to carry out such an investigation was through a UN Security Council resolution sanctioned by the Council’s five permanent members, namely the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China

The UN’s silence on Khashoggi’s much-publicised murder was surprising for many because his killing had created shockwaves globally, not only because it had occurred inside an embassy but it had apparently been carried out in a cruel medieval manner that entailed torture and dismembering of body parts. The fact that his body has not been found to this day also suggests that perhaps it was burnt beyond recognition or has been buried in a secret location.

Callamard’s call to make the Saudi regime accountable for Khashoggi’s death has largely fallen on deaf ears, with the Saudis insisting that they have carried out their own investigations and that the culprits are facing trial. No one quite believes that these trials are actually being conducted by impartial courts or if even they are, whether the suspects are actually the ones who carried out the killing, which was conducted in hit squad manner that could only have been sanctioned by the highest echelons of the Saudi government. One right-hand man of Prince Salman is widely believed to have overseen the murder but is not among those being prosecuted. Callamard says she received no cooperation from Riyadh when she conducted her investigations, and that Saudi officials have been largely opaque about the case.

It is possible that Callamard is unaware of the limitations of the UN or how international diplomacy works? Or maybe she believes that in her role as an impartial UN rapporteur she can push the international community to do the right thing.

What most people don’t realise is that the UN may appear to be a neutral, independent body, but its decisions have always been influenced by its most powerful and influential member states, who almost always have their way when it comes to handling international crises. For instance, the United States did not seek UN Security Council approval before invading Iraq in 2003, nor did the UN reprimand the US for taking this illegal action.

People also forget that a sizeable number of the UN’s 193 member states are dictatorships or repressive regimes that do not care much for human rights. Freedom of expression is not on top of the agenda of influential member states like China and Russia, for instance. So, as the setter or moral or ethical international standards, the UN is hardly the place to go.

It is possible that Callamard is unaware of the limitations of the UN or how international diplomacy works? Or maybe she believes that in her role as an impartial UN rapporteur she can push the international community to do the right thing.

In the Khashoggi case, Saudi Arabia, a big donor to the UN and a key ally of the UN’s biggest contributor, the United States, will do all it can to prevent an international criminal investigation. Saudi Arabia has already said that it will reject any attempt to undertake an international inquiry. The kingdom’s main allies, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, have also rejected Callamard’s 101-page report, which does not mince words when naming those who were most culpable for the murder of Khashoggi.

Hush money

Why have the UN and the US remained silent on this issue? Well, partly because Saudi Arabia has bought their silence. The US is keen to keep its relationship with one of the biggest buyers of US- made arms and military hardware, hence the lukewarm response to the murder. And the fact is that the UN Security Council’s five veto-holding permanent members have never really been committed to world peace because wars keep their military industrial complexes going. These countries are the largest manufacturers and suppliers of arms. When wars occur in far-off places, arms manufacturers in these countries have a field day. Wars in former French colonies in Africa keep France’s military industrial complex well-oiled. Wars in the Middle East are viewed by British and American arms manufacturers as a boon for their arms industries.

If there were no wars in the world, the arms industry would have fewer or no customers. It is no surprise then that Donald Trump’s first foreign visit was to Saudi Arabia, which has been buying billions dollars-worth of arms from the United States for decades. Arms from the US have fuelled Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war in Yemen. Thus Saudi officials were neither embarrassed nor dismayed when Trump held up a placard showing the newest weapons his Saudi clients could get their hands on and use in their campaign in Yemen. The connection between military sales and silence on human rights violations became acutely visible in that particular photo opportunity.

In a world where nuclear disarmarmament deals are casually broken by the President of the United States because he has a feud with Iran, the UN remains a paralysed specatator. It has nothing to say, nothing to contribute. No pressure is placed on the United States – which contributes up to a quarter of the UN’s budget – to rethink its policies. There are no press releases issued on the dangers that the cancellation of the deal will pose to world peace.

On the contrary, wars and other disasters provide the UN an opportunity to fund-raise. The UN’s campaign in Yemen, for example, is not about ending the war, but raising donations for the millions who are suffering as a result of the Saudi-led war. Wars and other calamities fuel various United Nations agencies, including the refugee agency UNHCR and the World Food Programme, whose coffers get quickly filled when disaster strikes, which enable their employees to continue earning hefty tax-free salaries.

The UN is also not keen not to upset a key US ally and a big contributor to its coffers. Saudi Arabia uses its vast oil wealth to cover up its crimes. In March 2018, for example, the UN received nearly $1 billion from the Saudi prince as a donation towards the UN’s efforts at alleviating a humanitarian crisis in Yemen – a crisis that would not have occurred if the Saudis had not bombed Yemen in the first place. The war in Yemen has killed several thousands of people and created a humanitarian crisis in which more than 20 million people are in need of basic supplies.

Saudi Arabia – the perpetrator of this war crime – is now trying to be the face of compassion in Yemen. The donation was a great photo opportunity for the prince, who was seen giving the money to a smiling UN Secretary-General at the UN’s headquarters in New York. Antonio Guterres did not use the opportunity to urge the prince to stop the onslaught against the Yemenese people. In fact, the UN has remained rather muted throughout the crisis in Yemen, and only speaks out when soliciting for donations for the traumatised Yemenese population.

And in 2016, after a leaked UN report on children’s rights violations became public, the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted to removing Saudi Arabia from a list of countries that had violated children’s rights. This admission shocked the world but did not result in the resignation of the Secretary General.

Hush money has bought the UN’s silence on human rights violations that the Saudi state has committed against the people of Yemen and against its own citizens, including women who are jailed for breaking Saudi Arabia’s draconian laws that punish female car drivers and torture those who dare defy the regime. Ironically, Saudi Arabia even has a seat at the UN Human Rights Council, which has left many human rights defenders equally amazed and disgusted.

That is how international diplomacy works at the UN. Keep quiet when big donors violate human rights, but be vocal about violations committed by small, insignificant countries whose voices are drowned out at the UN Security Council and other UN bodies. Talk about women’s rights in Afghanistan but keep quiet about torture chambers in Saudi Arabia. Scold a poor country like Liberia for not doing enough for children’s education, but ignore the plight of children who are sexually abused or trafficked in the United States. Castigate former child soldiers from Uganda or the Congo for crimes against humanity but ignore the war crimes and mass murders ordered by President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in Iraq.

If anyone still has any doubt that the UN is fair and impartial, its response to Khassoggi’s murder should lay to rest any such illusions.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Follow us on Twitter.