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CIAO DATE: 3/99
When Networks Blind: Comparing Different Periods of Transnational Human Rights Activism in Kenya *
Department for Social and Political Sciences (SPS)
European University Institute
Italy
International Studies Association
40th Annual Convention
Washington, D.C.
February 16–20, 1999
Introduction 1
The tremendous growth of the non-governmental sector both in the Western and Southern world has lately also led to an increasing academic interest in the subject matter. In the human rights area, a sizable literature emerged which identified international and domestic human rights groups and their networking activities as an increasingly influential factor for regime change (Burgerman 1998: 910; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Sikkink 1993). 2 In particular, this literature highlights strategies on part of those actors which aim at circumventing the human rights violating state and building direct connections between the local and the international level. As a result, authoritarian governments face increasingly compelling pressure for change “from above and below” (Brysk 1993). These actions have hardly immediate material consequences or change institutions over night. They tell previously untold stories about the social reality and represent attempts to connect what has been separated before. They are forms of social action a conventional political science perspective will tend to ignore, because attention to such connections would question the traditional bias for the study of institutions and boundaries. Challenges to the status quo as the roots for regime change presuppose the emergence of alternative discourses and networks.
An explanation of such processes can not limit itself to the analysis of institutional stasis, but must follow those who cross boundaries in their minds and intentional actions. In Michael Barnett’s words, members of such transnational human rights networks became “an authority” during the last 20 years 3 and were capable of challenging human rights violating governments which were “in authority”. The authority of network members relied mainly on a combination of principled adherence to international human rights norms and a professed expertise on human rights issues over decades. 4 However, often success was also crucially dependent on coalitions with other institutions “in authority”, such as the United Nations or Western States.
While the named literature has been successful in putting such transnational human rights networks on the research agenda of scholars in international relations and comparative politics, there is still little knowledge on the long-term effects of their activities. In this contribution, I will suggest ways of understanding such effects by comparing the role of transnational human rights networks prior and after the reintroduction of multipartyism in Kenya in late 1991. First, I argue that during the 1980s the domestic opposition to the extension of authoritarian rule relied on international contacts for its very survival. These contacts did not only protect a number of individual human rights activists from serious harm but transformed the entire composition of the domestic opposition movement. The transnational mobilization in the late-1980s and early 1990s crucially contributed to the donor decision in November 1991 to temporarily cut aid and the subsequent reintroduction of multipartyism by the Kenyan government.
Second, in the following section I shift attention to the following period of protracted and still ongoing regime transition. When the Kenyan government had secured its political survival despite an almost two-thirds majority of votes for the opposition, transnational human rights mobilization remained strong. While the international contacts remained an important safeguard for human rights actors, long-term and sometimes even exclusive reliance on such networks with the outside world constrain actors in the domestic political struggle for political reforms. International contacts cannot substitute for the development of a solid domestic political following simply because international actors are not a constituency in Kenyan national affairs. Although the expansion of the civil society sector after 1991 also led to intensified horizontal networking, these networks tended to be ethnically biased. Such networks which failed to overcome ethnic divisions and simply added international voices to their demands had either a hard time to develop local capacities or were met with increasing hostility by the government.
Hence, the interventions of outsiders in any Kenyan domestic politics will always be problematic if national elections are seen as the central means to confer temporary legitimacy upon a government. This is less of a problem if such interventions are limited to the protection of the right to life or personal integrity. Such interventions do not require majoritarian democratic legitimization, but can be derived from democracy’s inherent protection of the minority. This position could also be defended with regard to the establishment of institutions designed to give minorities the opportunity to become a majority. However, if interventions address more complex issues linked to the national political development outside voices and their domestic allies potentially come into conflict with the very democratic values they invoke. Self-proclaimed international and domestic human rights defenders stretch their mandate if they seek leadership in political affairs based on a principled defense of these norms.
This argument is not intended to vindicate the authoritarian rhetoric against ‘foreign intrusion’ or ignore the fact that the ‘democratic majority’ recently gathered behind the Moi regime is a product of wide-ranging gerrymandering and election manipulation. However, whereas international interventions can be justified in cases of protecting individual lives, their impact on processes of complex regime is more ambivalent. If parts of the opposition neglect the question of creating a domestic base and continue to appeal for international forces as a substitute, this will potentially backfire on its legitimacy in the domestic arena. This is particularly relevant in countries such as Kenya which have attained political independence during the 1960 after a violent anti-colonial struggle. Their national identity is still rather defensive in terms of outside intrusion, especially when such interventions emanate from the territory of the former colonial power. Hence, the powerful tool of international networking in protecting one’s life can turn into a serious constraint in the long run. If participants of networks once designed to bring about change are blinded by these successes, they will fail to adjust to new circumstances. In order to further clarify these points, I will introduce here a basic distinction between ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ networking activities.
Vertical and Horizontal Networking as Forms of Social Action
Emirbayer/Goodwin commended the network literature for offering a “new mode of structuralist inquiry” that goes clearly beyond other structural accounts with their sole emphasis on categorial attributes of individual and collective actors (Emirbayer/Goodwin 1994: 1413). Network analysis moves structuralism beyond a static position towards a more dynamic mode of interaction between participants. “From the network point of view, analytical approaches that direct attention to the ‘intrinsic characteristics’, ‘essences’, attributes, or goals of individuals, as opposed to their patterned and structured interrelationships, are all inherently suspect” (Emirbayer/Goodwin 1994: 1416). Network analysis has the potential of turning the truism that all actors are embedded in some sort of social relationships into a sensible tool for social inquiry. For the Kenyan example, I show how a transnational network not only emerged, but also constituted and strengthened new domestic actors whose growing influence can not be explained with reference to their essential attributes (e.g. lawyer or church representative), but precisely the network and interactions they chose to be part of. Moreover, in the main part of the chapter I look at the transformation of this original network over time and the long-term effects of intensified vertical networking at the possible expense of horizontal connections.
In order to establish a network perspective as a viable alternative to other forms of social inquiry, earlier scholarship overemphasized the role of “empty” formal network relations at the expense of the “causal role of ideals, beliefs, and values, and of actors that strive to realize them” (Emirbayer/Goodwin 1994: 1446). However, there is no necessary trade-off between a sophisticated analysis of the social structure in a network perspective and a equally refined recognition of agency and (non-) material conditions. Emirbayer/Goodwin are correct in maintaining that any explanation of actor’s behavior in a network perspective has to analytically separate the social structure (network) from the equally important “cultural structure” (e.g. norms and symbols). Both structural features can not be collapsed in one (Emirbayer/Goodwin 1994: 1439). Frederick Cooper refers to this “as the crucial intersection of structures, networks, and discourses.”
This contribution suggests that a basic distinction between vertical and horizontal networking represents a valuable addition to recent scholarship on the significance of transnational human rights networks for domestic political change. This literature has usually concentrated on efforts by domestic actors to circumvent a repressive state apparatus and appeal for support from the international level. Such efforts were usually made in response to increasing domestic repression by state agencies which either destroyed potential alternative power-bases and existing underlying horizontal networks or prevented the emergence of such domestic networks in the first place. In many countries of Africa, such horizontal networks outside of the ruling elite were in constant conflict with the highly personalistic logic of neopatrimonial rule. During the 1980s, international human rights organizations, but also other states or international organizations have increasingly taken up such requests for support and supplemented pressure from below with pressure from above.
Moreover, in virtually all areas of development cooperation such connections spread even faster because the state was usually not the target of activism, but often simply abdicated its role in providing even essential services in areas such as education, health, or rural development. With an increasing interest of donor agencies in shifting aid away from state agencies and support the non-governmental sector instead, such connections solidified. Vertical networking and accompanying transfer of resources enabled an ever increasing number of non-governmental domestic actors to institutionalize and become independent from state resources. In the human rights area, such ‘independence’ usually meant often nothing more than bare survival. Hence, the growth of the transnational non-governmental human rights movement and its networking efforts was a direct response to the expansion of authoritarian rule during the 1960s and 1970s. In principle, relevant networking activities can occur both on the international and domestic as well as between these levels. While the earlier research on transnational human rights networks focused mainly on the role of vertical networks in supplementing or substituting domestic horizontal networks, it is the purpose of this contribution to broaden the perspective both on the domestic and international level. This will lead to a more dynamic conceptualization of local-international connections.
Finally, with emerging new communication technologies such as fax and, more recently, E-mail vertical networking was further privileged, in particular in regions were the lack of economic development prevented the countrywide adoption of advanced communication devices. During the last 20 years, communication capabilities as a main condition for building networks developed much more quickly across than within national boundaries. African capitals were usually better connected to any Western city than the respective rural area (or other African capitals for that matter). These changes supported the shift from horizontal to vertical networking. After briefly describing the historical background, I will show how this shift from horizontal to vertical networking was at the heart of the successful challenge to authoritarian rule in Kenya in the late 1980s.
The Emergence of Authoritarian Rule until the mid-1980s
At the time of political independence, two parties, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), competed for national power. While KANU represented the interests of the larger ethnic groups (mainly Kikuyu and Luo), KADU formed as a coalition of smaller, pastoral groups (mainly Kalenjin and Maasai) to counter the threat of KANU dominance. KADU strongly advocated federalist ideas (majimbo) in order to protect the independence of the smaller ethnicities. Shortly after the electoral victory of KANU in the first post-independence elections, KADU dissolved and its leadership crossed over to KANU. The result was the emergence of a de facto one-party system led by the first independence president Jomo Kenyatta. Subsequently, one of the former KADU leaders, Daniel arap Moi, was named Vice-President.
Until Kenyatta’s death in 1978, the country’s political system was relatively stable and the executive tolerated some democratic competition within the ruling party Kenya African National Union (KANU). This justified the overall characterization of the political system at that time as “semi-competitive” (Barkan 1992: 167). Nonetheless, fundamental political opposition was repressed and human rights abuses for political reasons had been on record since the early 1970s. The situation worsened when the Vice-President Daniel arap Moi succeeded Kenyatta and began to consolidate his domestic power position against the still powerful Kenyatta cronies (Karimi/Ochieng 1980).
Local-International Connections and the Challenge of Authoritarian Rule, 1984 to 1990
After a brief period of political liberalization and a unsuccessful coup by air force officers on 1 August 1982, Moi revived KANU as an instrument to sharply increase the executive control over parliament, the judiciary and society at large (Widner 1992). At the same time, Moi removed the existing country’s political elite, which was dominated by members of Kenyatta’s ethnic group, the Kikuyu. Moi brought in members of his own Kalenjin group or other smaller ethnicities which had been aligned with the Kalenjin in the KADU coalition. After 1982, the repression of political dissent became routine (Howard 1991). The government justified its repressive measures by claiming that radical opponents of the regime had gone underground and formed the clandestine organization MwaKenya to stage another coup. Members of the country’s universities became increasingly targets of the state security forces. In 1985/1986 security personnel repeatedly arrested and tortured university lecturers and students, but also other alleged members of radical opposition (Anonymous 1987). As a result of the domestic repression, the Kenyan opposition sought protection and assistance from the outside world and intensified vertical networking.
The situation in Kenya became a concern for the international human rights community. A number of Kenyan dissidents were granted political asylum in Western countries, most prominently the former Member of Parliament Koigi wa Wamwere in September 1986 in Norway. Amnesty International adopted several of the detained alleged MwaKenya members as prisoners of conscience. Consequently, a transnational human rights network emerged that transported information about the domestic conditions to the outside world. While Amnesty International relied on domestic sources for its reports (Amnesty International 1987), the presence of political exiles such as the charismatic Koigi wa Wamwere in Western capitals further intensified vertical networking and mobilization. “Arguably, he was the most important opinion leader in Kenyan affairs in Norway in the late 1980s” (Baehr, Selbervik, and Tostensen 1995: 68). Koigi linked not only intellectual circles in Kenya to the Norwegian public, but maintained also contacts to similar groups in the United States where he had studied for one year at Cornell University in the early 1980s. While Koigi’s identity as a Kikuyu and his political activism made him a prime target for the government in Kenya, Western perceptions of his identity concentrated almost exclusively on his fate as a political refugee.
Domestically, the part of the opposition which could resist state oppression was reduced to the churches and a group of lawyers organized around the Law Society of Kenya (LSK). While other societal organizations had to succumb to the interventions by KANU and the executive, the churches and lawyers could resist usurpation because they had already established ties to the outside world and controlled financial resources of their own. Apart from individual lawyers, it were the churches and in particular the National Council of Churches in Kenya (NCCK) which put up the first coherent resistance against authoritarian rule. While the NCCK had been working closely with the state bureaucracy of the newly independent Kenya during the 1960s and 1970s, the relations became now increasingly strained. For the 1970s, Lonsdale et al. pointed to the exceptional role of the NCCK where “the presence of its expatriate staff bears witness to the fact that Nairobi is a suburb of Ecumenopolis, World City” (Lonsdale, Booth-Clibborn, and Hake 1978: 272/3). Moreover, Lonsdale also observed that the NCCK’s theology was liberal and its “gospel as much social as individual.” It’s staff “had no organic or historical connection with the local environment,” a situation which enabled the NCCK “to be ‘alongside’ the new African politics (...) in a way in which the local churches would have found difficult even if their leaders had thought it desirable” (Lonsdale, Booth-Clibborn, and Hake 1978: 269/70). As I will argue later with regard to the 1990s, a similar trade-off between vertical and horizontal networking pervaded parts of the political opposition.
The strong outside ties of the NCCK became now important channels for enlisting international support against authoritarian rule. Similarly, many university teachers and lawyers had been trained abroad and used now these contacts to inform the outside world about mounting repression in Kenya. In this early phase of still growing governmental repression, vertical networking became a crucial factor in defending one’s independence. In a situation where the domestic opposition was trying to survive and too weak to exert significant pressure from below, the international arena served as an alternative avenue for networking and mobilization. While the Kenyan government was in complete control of the domestic arena, vertical networking enabled the opposition to threaten the international image of Kenya as a stable and reliable partner of the Western world.
To this end, the weak domestic and growing international part of the transnational human rights network took in 1987 advantage of Moi’s planned state visits to the United States and Europe. When Daniel arap Moi met US President Reagan on 12 March, the Washington Post titled one day later ‘Police Torture is Charged in Kenya’. The detailed information in the article had been provided by Gibson Kamau Kuria, a defense lawyer in the MwaKenya trials, who had also been arrested only a few weeks prior to Moi’s US visit. The US State Department spokesman, Charles Redman, had already previously declared that human rights would be on the agenda for the talks between Moi and Reagan: “The allegations of torture, apparently supported by signed affidavits from those in Kenya who claim to have been tortured, raise serious questions of human rights abuses” (Africa Contemporary Record, Vol. XIX, B 334). Faced with these questions and mounting pressure, President Moi ended his visit prematurely. Later that year, Moi cancelled a visit to Norway and Sweden and complained about continued human rights attacks in the media. The Danish government withdrew an invitation to Moi at short notice citing imminent general elections. The horizontal networking activities of non-governmental human rights organizations on the international level now began to affect other concerned individuals or organizations such as journalists and even parts of Western state bureaucracies.
The process of deconstructing the international image of Kenya continued until the early 1990s, while the situation of the domestic opposition and human rights conditions hardly changed and remained precarious. In 1989, Gibson Kamau Kuria received the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for Human Rights. In 1990 the unresolved murders of the Kenyan Foreign Minister Robert Ouko 5 and Catholic Bishop Muge, the Saba Saba riots on 7 July and numerous other incidents of political violence and government repression completed a picture even the most lenient donor governments could no longer ignore. An ever growing number of international human rights organizations showed an interest in Kenya and sought to establish relations with domestic groups. The negative image of Kenya in the early 1990s can clearly be traced to the activities of human rights network which grew and mobilized almost exclusively on the international level. Slowly, the negative international image of the Kenyan government also changed the domestic power balance in favor of the political opposition. Domestic critics became more numerous and outspoken, although the government still prevented any attempts to institutionalize political dissent. On 3 May 1990, the former Cabinet ministers Charles Rubia and Kenneth Matiba announced for the first time since 1981 the creation of a new party and demanded multi-party elections. Their subsequent arrests and detention without trial was successfully used by the opposition to mobilize for street demonstrations against the Moi regime.
Networking activities within the Kenyan NGO sector also increased and became more political in nature. In 1990, a section of the NGO community created a National Council of NGOs which was charged with representing their interests towards the government. The first major confrontation occurred when the Kenyan executive pushed legislation intended to increase its control over the NGO sector (Ndegwa 1996). Although the NGO community could not prevent the establishment of registration and reporting requirements, it was able to water down the legislation and retain some of the de facto independence gained during the 1980s. The struggle between NGOs and the executive over the legislation was a turning point that indicated slowly changing power relations between the government and its critics.
In September 1990, the International Bar Association moved its bi-annual meeting with more than 3,000 participants from Nairobi to New York. The Kenyan government remained largely unmoved by the growing international isolation and the institutionalization of domestic dissent. On 22 October, Kenya severed diplomatic relations with Norway after the government had earlier expressed dismay about the Norwegian Ambassador Niels Dahl’s decision to regularly attend the court proceedings against Koigi wa Wamwere (Baehr, Selbervik, and Tostensen 1995: 69). In July 1991 Human Rights Watch published Kenya. Taking Liberties , the most comprehensive human rights report on the country (Africa Watch/Human Rights Watch 1991) to date. On 2 August, the opposition created a broad coalition called the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) which was “inspired by Civil Forum in East Germany and Czechoslovakia” (Throup 1993: 390). The creation of FORD was a breakthrough in establishing a direct challenge to KANU and Moi and reflected the shifting domestic power balance. At the November donor meeting, the continuous non-governmental efforts in “re-mapping” (Brysk 1993: 268) Western perceptions of Kenya played a crucial role in the decision to suspend fast-disbursing financial aid amounting to $850 Million for six months. “Kenya, the long-time favorite of the West, was being treated as one of Africa’s pariah regimes” (Throup/Hornsby 1998: 84). Within a few days after the donor decision, President Moi ordered parliament to repeal section 2A of the constitution which declared Kenya an one-party state. Multiparty elections were set for late 1992.
In sum, the period between 1984 and 1990 highlights the role of existing non-governmental local-international connections in withstanding the expansion of authoritarianism. While repression was an ubiquitous phenomenon in a society still dominated by a host of colonial laws, significant resistance to this repression was only possible for the educated elites in the urban areas. They were able to form the nucleus of a reviving domestic opposition because of the traditional ties to the outside world and the retained financial independence. Their efforts to intensify international connections and network vertically were positively answered by international human rights organizations which began to focus on the domestic political situation in Kenya. As Cooper writes, the “possibility of internationalist action (...) made it possible for opponents within any given territory to imagine their opposition in wider — and more optimistic — terms that would otherwise be the case.” The international non-governmental mobilization originated in the narrow human rights sector and later affected, by means of horizontal networking, the attitudes of Western media, other non-governmental actors, and even parts of Western legislatures and state bureaucracies. This mobilization was crucial for the donor decision to cut aid and the subsequent reintroduction of multipartyism.
Domestically, the struggle for political power pitted the two ethnic coalitions against each other which had already been present at the time of independence. After the death of Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi replaced the existing leadership and completely transformed the composition of KANU. While Kikuyus and Luos had dominated Kenyan politics for almost 20 years, they were now systematically removed in favor of Kalenjins, Maasai, and members of other smaller ethnicities. Hence, the recruits for the emerging civil society actors concerned with regime change belonged mainly to the disenfranchised Kikuyu elite. Their call for human rights was principled inasmuch as it reflected a means to the rather worldly end of regaining influence in national affairs. International actors interested in furthering the cause of human rights and democracy in Kenya did not simply cooperate with principled domestic groups, but also began to affect this ongoing struggle between different ethnic coalitions. These more ambivalent effects of local-international connections are the subject of the following section.
Local-International Connections and Regime Change, 1991-1998
The decision to return to multipartyism had three major consequences. First, opportunities for the organization and institutionalization of political dissent generally increased. Within months, the executive lost much of its control over the urban-centered societal realm where dozens of opposition groups now reclaimed the previously lost terrain. Individual members of the opposition took advantage of the window of opportunity and now created NGOs with more institutionalized local (read: urban)-international connections. Suddenly, there were dozens of domestic groups in the area of human rights competing for donor funding. At the same time, donor organizations were busy finding such organizations to implement changing funding strategies.
Second, the advent of multipartyism led to the establishment of a political opposition movement mainly interested in replacing Moi as president and KANU as the leading party. Several ministers of Moi’s cabinet and other leaders used the opportunity to quit KANU and form their own (often ethnically narrow) opposition parties. To the mainstream of the opposition politicians issues of constitutional reform were only of interest in so far as they contributed to a level playing field for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. However, multipartyism created not only an opportunity to contest Moi and KANU in elections, it also increased incentives for competition within the opposition.
Third, the ruling elite reacted to this new situation by developing new strategies designed to defend its threatened power position. Emphasis was now given to more narrow and short-term objectives such as the control of the 1992 election process, rather than the continued stifling of the civil society sector. An important part of this strategy was the deliberate instigation of ‘ethnic violence’ directed against groups known to be in favor of the political opposition and a revival of the earlier majimbo-debate as an alternative model to the majority models advocated by the political opposition. As a result, more than 2,000 Kenyans were killed in 1991/92 and several hundred thousand displaced (Africa Watch/Human Rights Watch 1993). A parliamentary commission reaffirmed not only the political character of the attacks, but found also evidence for the leading role played by high-level KANU representatives (Republic of Kenya 1992: 68). This did not mean that the Kenyan government now ended its repression of the mainly urban-based (and -biased) civil and political opposition. Domestic critics were still regular targets of security organs and many attempts to institutionalize dissent was met with open threats and harassment. However, compared to the 1980s the executive could no longer sustain complete control of the political system and society at large.
The process of political liberalization opened up opportunities for the establishment of domestic human rights groups and other political NGOs. For the first time, Kenyan non-governmental organizations specializing in human rights advocacy emerged as significant actors in the domestic arena. One of these organizations, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), constituted itself in September 1992 as a transnational group when it opened offices simultaneously in Nairobi and Boston/USA. KHRC became the major donor-funded local organization which provided human rights information to interested local and international observers. KHRC essentially copied the working methods of Amnesty International and regularly monitored human rights conditions and published so-called Quarterly Repression Reports . Issues raised by KHRC ranged from torture, extra-judicial killings by police officers, to the state of the judiciary (e.g. Kenya Human Rights Commission 1993; Kenya Human Rights Commission 1994; Kenya Human Rights Commission 1995). Amnesty International became the main international partner of KHRC, while various donor agencies financed its work and publications, including the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights. KHRC’s executive director, Maina Kiai, and many other Kenyan human rights activists began to extensively travel overseas and provide information on the human rights situation directly to their partner organizations. If the Kenyan authorities dared to arrest such individuals, the transnational human rights network almost instantaneously threw its weight behind them.
Other organizations such as Release Political Prisoners (RPP), the Center for Law and Research International (CLARION), or the Citizen’s Coalition for Constitutional Change (the 4C’s) followed suit. These organizations now supplemented the voices of protest previously sustained only by church organizations and the lawyer’s community. Moreover, the whole NGO sector was increasingly politicized and many organizations began to introduce a political component in their work. “A majority tended not only to address community development and institution building, but also human rights issues with civic education constituting the core of their activities” (Tostensen, Andreassen, and Tronvoll 1998: 33). Thus, the number and stability of domestic ‘nodes’ of a transnational network on human rights increased significantly. The domestic call for constitutional reforms became more coherent and was further strengthened. However, the sharp increase of NGOs and subsequent horizontal networking was mainly due to the fact that many of the former government critics now set up their own organizations and could attract donor funding for them. The institutionalization of domestic dissent tended to stabilize already existing informal networks rather than creating new ones. 6 Hence, ethnic bias also pervaded the emerging sector of organizations pressing for constitutional reforms. Many of those ‘nodes’ had been created by politically active members of the Kikuyu ethnicity who knew each other very well and pursued a distinct political agenda.
Shortly after the introduction of multipartyism, the opposition coalition FORD disintegrated and in December a total of eight parties and presidential candidates competed in the elections. Although the opposition accounted for more than two thirds of the vote, the heavy gerrymandering of constituencies (Ndegwa 1998: 207) and the splits within the opposition enabled Moi and KANU to retain power. When the parliamentary opposition continued to be paralyzed by the electoral defeat and internal wrangles, the NGO sector became in the mid-1990s the main source for continued reform pressure on the Kenyan government from below. International material and ideational support remained crucial for the sustainability of that challenge, in particular, after the donor community resumed aid programs in late 1993. However, that challenge was not only about principles and human rights issues, but also reflected a strategy of disenfranchised urban Kikuyu elites to (re-)gain influence on national politics. After 1991/92, increasing donor support for the NGO sector created a supply-driven expansion of the sector, mainly in the areas of civil education and domestic governance. While the political opposition was defeated in the elections and further split along ethnic lines, this particular section of the NGO sector sustained pressure for reforms.
The Re-Formation of the Opposition
In 1996/97, the extra-parliamentary reform groups within civil society stepped up their domestic and international mobilization for constitutional reforms. Intensive efforts in horizontal and vertical networking became a crucial instrument in finally cornering the government. Nonetheless, the government continued to delay reforms and tried to repeat the successful 1992 tactics by offering minor concessions in the period prior to the elections in order to reassert control shortly after the polls. Tactical concessions intended to pacify domestic and international critics included the establishment of a Standing Committee on Human Rights in August 1996, the final release of Koigi wa Wamwere on 13 December 1996, or the accession to the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in February 1997.
This time, the opposition reacted with greater unity to the government’s tactics. In April 1996, members a coalition of parliamentary opposition members forming the Inter-Parties Group (IPG) invited civil society groups to participate in their deliberations. One year later, from 3-6 April, a coalition of thirteen opposition parties, church organizations and NGOs held a follow-up meeting to press for constitutional reforms prior to the upcoming General Elections. The first National Convention for Constitutional Reform in Limuru formed an executive committee (NCEC) which was charged with representing the coalition in national political affairs. While the meeting only repeated long-standing demands of the opposition, the coalition now threatened to resort to mass action such as street demonstrations or general strikes if the government refused to sit down for negotiations. The plan to mobilize the Kenyan public to further press the government from below was well attuned to other plans which sought to bring pressure from above. The NCEC called for the first street demonstration to endorse the opposition demands on 31 May, one day before an Amnesty International delegation led by the organization’s General Secretary Pierre Sané was due for a two-week visit in the country. 7 This coordination of forces marked an important step towards intensified vertical and horizontal networking as Amnesty International launched a “Human Rights Manifesto for Kenya” together with 17 Kenyan human rights organizations.
In the following months, the NCEC became the main force behind the intensified campaign for constitutional reforms. In turn, the NCEC represented many of the internationally well connected human rights activists, such as Gibson Kamau Kuria, Kivuta Kibwana, or Paul Muite. Popular political leaders, such as Kenneth Matiba, lent their support and local mobilization capabilities to the cause of the NCEC. The call for nation-wide protests on 31 May was followed by thousands of Kenyans. Moi reacted to the pressure in his usual style. On the one hand he offered to replace the Public Order Act with a still to be written Peaceful Assembly Bill, on the other hand, he rejected demands for even minimal constitutional reforms prior to the elections. Moi blamed “foreign-funded NGOs” for the street chaos and threatened them with de-registration. “There are some NGOs such as the ones that have been engaged in feeding famine victims, but there are others which have gone against their mandate and are seeking to influence political developments in this country. (...) They are not allowed to play politics, because that is how Africa has become the experimental playing ground for everything” (Daily Nation, 21 June 1997). More fundamentally, Moi held that the NCEC was nothing but a “congregation of self-styled leaders” not elected by the Kenyan people. Although everyone knew Moi’s motives, he skillfully framed the conflict as an issue of “us” (the Kenyan people) against “them” (foreigners). This argument was intended to resonate not only with basic democratic norms, but also with the powerful discourse of political independence. The fact that the NCEC was dominated by forces with exceptionally high international contacts and a comparatively smaller domestic base, gave Moi’s arguments some leverage although his overall credibility remained low.
The NCEC reacted to Moi’s rhetorical attacks with another call for street demonstrations on 7 July ( Saba Saba ). The anti-riot measures taken by the Kenyan police left twelve demonstrators dead and scores injured. Several dozen parishioners were severely beaten when the police stormed Nairobi’s All Saints Cathedral during a service. Once again, the news made it to the headlines of international media and the Kenyan government had maneuvered itself into international isolation. Vertical networking was enough to narrow the government’s choices, but it did not solve the basic predicament of the NCEC concerning its lack of a broad domestic base. Two weeks later, the World Bank and the IMF gave Kenya one week to “show tangible signs of transparency and accountability” with respect to the agreed economic reforms. When Moi withdrew a letter by Finance Minister Mudavadi which indicated compliance with the demands, the IMF suspended the disbursement of a $220 Mio. US-Dollar low-interest loan.
In this situation, Moi agreed to immediate reform talks and invited 17 religious leaders to State House. The following day, Moi announced the first major and unconditional concession by abolishing the licensing requirements for public rallies. He also declared that a constitutional review commission made up by members of parliament should come up with a list of minimal reforms to be implemented prior to the elections. The announcement immediately split the opposition. While the leaders of the opposition parties in parliament saw this as an opportunity to reenter the reform process, members of the extra-parliamentary civil society groups naturally rejected the proposals and called for all-inclusive talks. Consequently, the NCEC called for a general strike on 8 August to press for the inclusion of civil society actors. Without the support of many popular opposition leaders, the call for a general strike was hardly followed by the population. However, leading KANU members felt sufficiently threatened by the renewed mobilization and intensified again the majimbo debate. Similar to 1991/92, ‘ethnic violence’ broke out exactly at the time when the opposition had almost forced the government to agree to serious reforms. This time, the violence centered in the Coastal region south of Mombasa where more than one hundred Kenyans were killed and thousands fled their homes.
By the end of August, the government and the NCEC exchanged increasingly hostile accusations. Moi and his ministers claimed that the NCEC was “backed by foreigners to start a revolution in Kenya” (Daily Nation, 31 August 1997). The president claimed that the NCEC was about to stage a “civilian coup” and intended to subvert the elected government. This statement followed the Limuru II meeting held from 25 to 28 August where the NGO representatives had decided to constitute the NCEC as a parallel government if KANU did not finally enter serious dialogue. The meeting also resolved to call for two other major rallies on 9 September (Tisa Tisa ) and 10 October (Kumi Kumi ). Faced with the threat of continued mass action, Vice-President Saitoti tried to break the deadlock and called on the closing day of Limuru II, a meeting of KANU and opposition MPs. He invited the opposition MPs to form the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) which would be charged with kicking off the constitutional reform process.
Pushing for the Inclusion of Civil Society
On 2 September the group agreed on minimum legal reforms, including a reform of the Electoral Commission and the deletion of the ban on forming a coalition government. The IPPG created three committees on legal and administrative issues (1), the electoral reform (2), and problems of domestic security (3). KANU and the opposition parties would be represented on the committees with half of the seats each. The NCEC reacted to its exclusion from the reform talks by reaffirming its call for demonstration on 9 September. However, in contrast to July and similar to the failed general strike in August, the demonstration failed to attract many Kenyans to the streets. While the extremely popular opposition politician Kenneth Matiba had earlier supported the NCEC’s calls for mass action, he now distanced himself from the organization’s policies. At the same time, the moderate opposition accepted KANU’s refusal to admit non-elected NCEC representatives at the negotiating table.
On the day of the first IPPG talks, Amnesty International launched its six month campaign “Kenya-The quest for Justice” which continued its cooperation with several domestic human rights groups. During the entire period, joined Amnesty-RPP groups visited all major European countries and briefed government representatives, parliamentarians, and the general public on the human rights situation in Kenya. Africa Watch published two extensive human rights reports as reminders of the upcoming General Elections (Human Rights Watch/Africa 1997a; Human Rights Watch/Africa 1997b). However, domestic affairs were now completely dominated by the surprising pace of the reform process. This represented a major departure from the previous intransigence of the government, although the prominence of KANU moderates in the negotiations was certainly an important enabling factor.
Within only two months time, the committees completed their work and the reforms were tabled in parliament by Attorney General Amos Wako. Amnesty International cautiously welcomed the progress made on constitutional reforms, but maintained that many issues were still unresolved. On 30 October, parliament voted with more than the required two-thirds majority in favor of the IPPG package (156 in favor, 26 against, one abstention). One week later, Daniel arap Moi signed the IPPG proposals into law (Daily Nation 8 November 1997). 8 Even though the NCEC had contributed to these results by its continued mobilization of domestic and international voices, it rejected the compromise as insufficient. On 11 September the NCEC stated that “the recommendations of the IPPG Sub-Committee change NOTHING whatsoever of real substance concerning reforms towards free and fair election in Kenya” (cited in Tostensen, Andreassen, and Tronvoll 1998: 37, emphasis in the original). Similar statements followed from critical church representatives. Later, the NCEC published a document which listed the democratic deficiencies of the IPPG package and compared it with their own proposals. However, an initial resolution by the NCEC to boycott and disrupt the elections was shelved on 11 November “pending public feedback”.
The fast and successful completion of the IPPG talks would not have been possible without the presence of an opposition divided in a moderate and radical section. The latter presented a constant threat of mass action to the government, which strengthened the moderates at the negotiation table. As a result, hardliners on the side of the government decided for the time being to remain in the background. On the side of the opposition the NCEC was excluded as a result of the government’s insistence on the participation of elected representatives only. Hence, the beginning of constitutional reforms in Kenya highlighted the almost classical emergence of hard- and softliners on both sides of the political divide. The civil society component within the NCEC had become a significant force in the domestic arena mainly because it maintained excellent relations to international human rights groups and partially reproduced their activities on the domestic level.
However, these outside connections were also one of civil society’s main constraints in the political struggle for reforms. A Moi government with an almost paranoid attitude towards outside interventions resisted civil society participation and insisted on elected representatives only. While this position revealed the perceived strength of those actors as much as the government’s intransigence, the possible long-term ramifications could not be easily ignored or rejected. What had started in the 1980s as a survival strategy against governmental repression now turned into a potential burden for political activists who had to play by democratic rules. Those rules favored actors and groups with strong domestic bases no matter how these had been obtained. Moreover, the independence struggle as a leitmotif of Kenyan identity could always be turned into an argument against any form of foreign intrusion, no matter what the exact context was.
The December 1997 elections were again dominated by president Moi and KANU, although the playing field was more level and the opposition was able to capture almost half of the parliamentary seats (Ajulu 1998). Moi was returned to his last term of presidency and KANU was able to gain 113 seats in parliament against 109 won by opposition parties. The domestic situation remained highly volatile. The NCEC and the government continued to clash on the constitutional reform process, while ‘ethnic violence’ returned to the Rift Valley after it had also flared up in the Coast region prior to the elections. When the Catholic and Protestant church leadership claimed that the Moi government had “no moral legitimacy to lead” and called upon Western governments to press for all-inclusive reform talks, Moi accused the church leaders of joining “the many shady and illegal groupings” and further held that “a Philippine-like revolution would not succeed in Kenya” (Daily Nation, 21 February 1998). Moi repeated his threats that he would outlaw NGOs supporting the “illegal” NCEC and advised domestic political activists to “join the legally constituted parties if they wished to engage in politics.”
Despite prior negative experience, the NCEC returned to its 1997 tactics and called upon the population to strike on 3 April, 4 and 5 May, a full week in June, and indefinitely starting from 1 July. In early April the response from the Kenyan population was again dismal and the NCEC called off all plans for strikes and demonstrations. While the urban-based elites dominating the NCEC had acquired some leverage due to their international contacts, they obviously overestimated their capabilities to mobilize domestic support. The impressive international resonance of their campaigns and the subsequent emphasis on vertical networking had discouraged them to build strong domestic networks beyond the groups they belonged to in the first place. These transnational and limited domestic networks combined with the weakened position of the government created misperceptions about one’s own capabilities. The new social relationship across national boundaries which originally created an enabling environment for challenging a repressive government now increasingly blinded its participants and narrowed choices towards an uncompromising attitude. While such a position might have been the only possible in light of the government’s intransigence, it was considerably weakened by the fragile domestic basis.
Reflecting the preferences of the Moi government, Attorney General Amos Wako announced on 1 April the creation of a 25 member Inter-Party Parliamentary Committee (IPPC) to supervise the constitutional reform process. Although the electoral victory gave the Moi government some new leverage to resist the pressure for political reform, the ongoing mobilization was finally also reflected in growing splits within the ruling elite. This resulted in two major defeats of the hardline faction around President Moi. First, in the area of economic reforms a majority of parliamentarians called upon the government to implement the anti-corruption measures agreed in negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank. During a seminar organized by the World Bank and the German Friedrich-Ebert Foundation Finance Minister Nyachae admitted that “Kenya was broke and corruption was rampant.” The participants resolved that economic reforms were a necessary condition for the resumption of the aid withheld since August 1997. A subsequent meeting of the KANU parliamentary group rejected Moi’s proposal to officially distance themselves from the recommendations of the seminar. After this defeat, Moi agreed to the reform package, but insisted that all measures must be taken under the leadership of KANU (East African, 7 May 1998). Second, KANU hardliners failed to prevent in parliament the creation of a truth commission charged with the investigation of all human rights abuses in Kenya since the early 1990s. Although KANU members were in the majority, the motion for the commission won a 54 to 49 majority.
Moi’s negative attitude towards the participation of civil society groups in the process of constitutional review was now also challenged from within KANU. The KANU members of the IPPC agreed to organize a day-long seminar of 400 political, religious and NGO leaders on the constitutional reform process. For the first time, demands for an inclusion of views outside of parliament were partially fulfilled. Attorney General Amos Wako chaired the meeting at ‘Bomas of Kenya’ on 11 May. NCEC representatives Gibson Kamau Kuria and Kivutha Kibwana repeatedly walked in protest out of the meetings, because KANU representatives still rejected civil society participation. Before the second round of the Bomas talks planned for 8-9 June, 36 participating groups led by the Catholic Church, the NCEC and the NGO Council threatened to boycott the meeting if their demands for greater inclusiveness were not met. They were supported by 42 MPs including five from the ruling party. The following day, Moi gave in to the continued pressure and announced an expansion of the review committee (Daily Nation, 2 June 1998).
On 22 June 33 civil organizations and all political parties met to decide on the future of the constitutional reform process. The NCEC was now officially included in the talks. During the meeting, hard line KANU representatives remained opposed to the inclusion of civil society representatives in the constitutional reform process and suggested the enlargement of the IPPC on the basis of district representation. The NCEC rejected the plan as “tribalist” and demanded representation based on existing civil society organizations. After intensive debates, both sides agreed one week later to set up a three-tiered structure under the leadership of the Constitutional Review Commission. One of the two other bodies would consist of representatives from the 65 districts (District Consultative Forum, DCF), while the other would bring in a broad range of politically active domestic organizations (National Constitutional Consultative Forum, NCCF). Shortly thereafter, KANU hawks rejected the compromise and Moi returned to his original position and declared that he was only willing to accept the various church organizations as partners in the constitutional debates.
Three days before the next round of talks and another imminent stand-off, bomb explosions ripped through Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam on 7 August. The bomb explosions targeted the US embassies in both East African capitals and killed an estimated 250 people, the majority in Nairobi. In the wake of the tragedy, the meeting on the constitutional reform issue was rescheduled for 24 August. In the course of the meeting, President Moi finally gave up his negative position towards NGO participation and his insistence on district representation. The compromise highlighted the profound changes Kenyan domestic politics had undergone since the early 1990s. “The fact that ‘radicals’ such as Prof. (Kivutha, HPS) Kibwana were sitting on the same committee with Mr. Sunkuli, an ultra-right wing KANU politicians shows just how much transformation Kenyan Politics has undergone over the past few months” (Githongo 1998).
However, most of the envisioned substantial steps towards democratization were still not yet agreed upon or implemented. So far, the compromise was only about the formal conditions under which reforms would take place. While the DCF secured representation according to the majimboist ideas advanced by the incumbent minority groups supporting the government, the NCCF represented the liberal ideas of the civil society sector. The former preferred constitutional reform based on ethnic communities and their representation in parliament because the current status quo secured an overrepresentation not only of KANU, but also of the smaller ethnic groups. In contrast, the NCEC as a group representing principled liberal values but also more narrow personal and ethnic interests of the larger tribes, advocated a process based on national citizenship and majority rules. Alternatively, it called for the participation of the civil society sector in order to counter the ruling elite’s dominance.
One day before the drafting committee was supposed to spell out the details of the compromise (5 October), the NCEC and one of the opposition parties withdrew their support and declared that the whole process was still controlled by Moi and KANU. NCEC officials threatened again with mass action and called for the formation of a coalition government (Daily Nation, 11 October 1998). The other participants went ahead and agreed on the composition of the Constitutional Review Commission. Of the 25 members, now thirteen were chosen from the parties in parliament and twelve from religious, women and other civil society organizations. Five were nominated by KANU, three by DP, two by NDP, and one by SDP and FORD-Kenya. The smaller parties in parliament were to get one seat jointly. The main Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic organizations nominated one member each. Finally, women organizations nominated five commissioners through the Kenya Women’s Political Caucus and civil society appointed the remaining four members through the National Council of NGOs (Daily Nation, 31 October 1998).
The main section of this contribution focused on the role of human rights focused local-international connections in processes of domestic regime change. During the 1980s vertical networking emerged as a crucial instrument to protect the domestic opposition from increasing government repression. The most articulate part of this opposition was an urban-based intellectual elite dominated by Kikuyus who had been deprived of well-paid positions in the government or state-controlled economic sector. Only a few years later, the international image of Kenya had been substantially changed mainly due to the mobilization efforts of a strengthening transnational human rights network. After 1991/92 the Kenyan government by and large accepted the institutionalization of political dissent as expressed by formation of opposition parties and an increasing number of civil society organizations active in the areas of human rights and constitutional reforms. The main targets of the 1980s repression period became now Executive Directors of NGOs and connected internationally mainly for material support rather than protection of their lives. Apart from the long-standing activism of Amnesty International, many governmental donor organizations now entered the field and began to support domestic NGOs clamoring for political reforms.
As a result of the changing domestic playing field, the newly established local-international connections solidified. With newly established human rights and good governance programs donors competed for reliable domestic organizations to channel their funds to. This also meant that the original bias towards one ethnic group (Kikuyu) became institutionalized. While this resulted in an ever growing network of local-international connections, some of its participants were blinded by the apparent successes. On the donor side, hardly anyone was concerned about the ethnic composition of the domestic human rights movement and the possible long-term effects of such a support. Moreover, in contrast to the 1980s when transnational human rights organizations actively approached other NGOs and Western governments on Kenya, the increase of international nodes caused by the emergence of donor organizations now interested in funding domestic NGOs was generally not accompanied by a simultaneous intensification of horizontal networking on both levels. In contrast to Amnesty International, donors tended to monopolize their local contacts and had a comparatively smaller incentive to cooperate with other donor organizations.
On the recipient’s side, the growing supply of aid money to the civil society sector led to growing reliance on vertical networking and a neglect of horizontal networking. In particular, the emerging domestic human rights movement only very slowly made serious efforts to transcend its ethnic bias. When the opposition finally formed in 1996/97 the NCEC as a joint platform to confront the government, it was much more effective in pushing for constitutional reforms mainly because it combined now individuals with strong international ties and local politicians capable of mobilizing the masses. However, this coalition remained fragile and the NCEC invariably failed to attract the necessary mass support if its leadership repeated the 1980s strategy of vertical networking and neglected horizontal networking.
Conclusions
The research on the role of transnational human rights movements in creating previously unknown local-international connections has mainly focused on showing that these forms of social action are indeed relevant for an understanding of domestic regime change. Earlier research on transnational human rights movements has mainly focused on the puzzle how materially weak non-governmental actors can successfully challenge state institutions whose domestic conduct is protected by the principle of state sovereignty. The answer was sought with reference to specific networking and mobilization strategies which deliberately circumvented the state and build connections between like-minded domestic and international activists. In the course of the mobilization, it is assumed, the domestic part of the human rights network is being strengthened in its position towards the state. The information accompanying the appeals is transformed by international human rights groups into powerful campaigns intended to mobilize international outrage about domestic human rights abuses. The ‘boomerang’ originating in the domestic arena (Sikkink 1993) passes through the international realm and finally ‘hits’ the human rights violating government “from above” (Brysk 1993).
This contribution moved beyond this original puzzle and looked at the long-term effects of such vertical networking efforts. While the case study confirmed many of the assumptions about the effects of transnational human rights networks, it highlighted a number of consequences of horizontal and vertical networking activities which deserve further attention from scholars within the areas of international relations and comparative politics. Most importantly, it is argued that vertical networking should be embedded in a long-term perspective and can itself be subject to a substantive transformation as a result of changes on the international or domestic level. During the 1980s, vertical networking became a survival strategy under an increasingly authoritarian regime. The emerging transnational network successfully mobilized international protest even beyond the narrow realm of professional human rights organizations.
After the initial success expressed by the November 1991 donor decision to temporarily halt aid flows, the members of this network continued to mobilize, while their network was substantially transformed. Internationally, many more non-governmental organizations outside of the narrow human rights sector and even state agencies became interested in vertical networking with groups seen as part of the ‘civil society’. Domestically, this sudden supply of aid money and the government’s partial acquiescence led to a dramatic increase in the number of human rights groups and other domestic NGOs almost over night. Many of the individuals who had previously sought protection by means of vertical networking now either went into politics or formed their own NGO. Political dissent and vertical networking was now institutionalized and became part of the bureaucratic process of administering aid flows. As a result of the new forms of cooperation international donor agencies were able to further legitimate their activities back at home, but tended to shy away from analyzing both the full range of intentions of their newly acquired partners and the long-term effects of such a change in funding strategies.
For Kenya, this blindness mainly ignored the urban and ethnic bias of the most vocal part of the opposition movement. After 1991, such intensified vertical networking activities with an increasingly broad range of international agencies and often at the expense of horizontal networking undermined the domestic position of participating local actors. Nonetheless, those sections of the opposition which had used vertical networking during the late-1980s to protect themselves became after 1995/96 successful challengers of the Moi regime. Without the pressure from these quarters, there would have been no minimal constitutional reforms prior to the 1997 elections and civil society actors would today still be excluded from the ongoing reform process. However, the intimate links to the outside world (and urban bias) were not also a constraint for these groups, because this tended to make them not only to foreigners in their own country but also overconfident about their domestic power capabilities. While they had little problems in getting outside donor money and support, this was not always a successful strategy in mobilizing domestic forces.
Even more problematic in a long-term perspective is the ethnic composition of those sectors within civil society which maintain the strongest ties to the outside world. Members of the Kikuyu ethnicity as the main targets of government repression during the 1980s formed the core of political dissent. Most of the victims were part of the articulate urban elite and worked at the universities or in the private sector. In the late 1980s, those groups were the main recruits for a ‘career’ as a human rights activist with extensive contacts to transnational human rights groups active in Western countries. However, not all such activists had a principled relationship to the issue of human rights, but perceived of it as a means to gain personally political influence or even to bring one’s own ethnicity (back) to national power. After 1991/92, the transformation of the domestic political paying field had two important repercussions both domestically and internationally. First, the fragile local-international contacts were institutionalized and, following principled organizations such as Amnesty International, many donor agencies appeared on the scene and sought to include well-known human rights activists in their aid programs. Second, the dominant purpose of the network shifted from the protection of individual human rights activists to a long-term intervention in the Kenyan process of regime change.
Considering the mixed motives of many domestic human rights groups and activists, such a long-term intervention is likely to have ambivalent effects. This is particularly true in the Kenyan case where a number of domestic actors continue to emphasize vertical networking at the expense of building a domestic base which extends beyond their own ethnic group. In such a case, there is a danger that human rights become a mere rhetoric used to further maximize donor support, both materially and ideationally. At the end of such a development, domestic human rights NGOs would reproduce the attitudes of the opposition parties which have no qualms about using human rights as an instrument to attain political power. For Kenya, this danger is augmented by the fact that the Kikuyu as a previously in national politics dominant ethnic group are today strongly represented not only in opposition parties but also in the respective civil society sector. Here, the call for human rights is often little more than a thinly disguised anti-Moi position. Hence, sensible outside support for the democratization process requires the development of a broadened perspective beyond the narrower realm of protective human rights and the support for a few urban-based human rights activists. Most importantly, such a more inclusive approach would have to break the monopoly of KANU hardliners on the issue of majimbo and develop alternative ideas about the future role of different ethnic groups in Kenyan national politics.
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Endnotes
*: Prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 16–20, 1999. Back.
Note 1: Drafts of this contribution were presented at the workshop “Local Governance and International Intervention in Africa”, March 28-29, 1998, at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence/Italy and a similar workshop at the University of Pennsylvania/Philadelphia, December 5-6, 1998. I thank the participants of the workshops and in particular Tom Callaghy, Ron Kassimir, and Robert Latham for their insightful comments. Back.
Note 2: Others have highlighted the influence of such transnational networks in global environmental and security questions (Price 1998; Wapner 1995; Zürn 1998). Back.
Note 3: However, the success of the transnational human rights movement as exemplified by the growth of Amnesty International might lead to the wrong perception that international concern for human rights focuses mainly on political and civil rights. While such rights are often involved in human rights struggles, Keck/Sikkink have convincingly shown with reference to female foot-binding in China and slavery that transnational mobilization for human rights often transcended the state and focused on practices deeply ingrained in society. Today, examples for transnational efforts to change cultural practices include most prominently the issue of female circumcision and domestic violence. In such cases, it is not some more or less ‘civil’ society which challenges a powerful state machinery. Back.
Note 4: With reference to the anti-slavery movement in the 19th century, Frederick Cooper shows in his contribution that the present transnational human rights movement is not a historically unique phenomenon. Back.
Note 5: Ouko had accompanied Moi on a visit to the United States only two weeks prior to his murder. There were rumors that the United States government favored him as a possible successor of Moi, after he had announced to address the issue of high-level corruption. Based on her interviews, Widner wrote that “upon his return (from the United States, HPS) Moi was so furious with Ouko that he ordered his assassination” (Widner 1992: 193). Hempstone even discussed accounts of the events which described a direct participation of the President in the torture and subsequent death of Ouko (Hempstone 1997: 66-70). See also the recently published account of Jonah Anguka, a former District Commissioner who was initially charged with the murder and later granted political asylum in the United States (Anguka 1998). Back.
Note 6: One Nairobi representative of a foreign donor organization called Kenyan NGOs during interviews in 1996 “very territorial and elitist”. Kenyan NGO representatives usually also acknowledged the problem of urban bias. Back.
Note 7: Although President Daniel arap Moi himself refused to meet the Amnesty representatives, many other important government officials did so, including the Vice-President Saitoti and the Attorney General Amos Wako (Amnesty International 1997). Back.
Note 8: The reforms included the explicit proclamation that Kenya was a “multi-party democratic state”, the appointment of opposition members to the Electoral Commission, the deletion of ‘detention without trial’ and ‘sedition’ from the Penal Code and the Preservation of Public Security Act, major curbs on the powers of local authorities in the Chief’s Authority Act, and measures to ensure equal presentation of political standpoints in the media. Finally, the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission Bill set up a commission which would undertake a comprehensive review of the constitution immediately after the elections (see Daily Nation, 12 September 1997). Back.
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