Building a Standing National Capacity for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Kenya

Abstract

Most conflicts today arise from intra-state rather than interstate tensions. Many developing countries are unable to manage intra-state conflicts effectively, mainly because of capacity constraints in their governance and oversight institutions, political manipulation and executive interference. The result is that public confidence in the institutions remains weak and there is greater resort to private and group justice. National development is thus deeply affected. In restoring public confidence in the state's ability to manage inter-group and inter-community conflicts, many governments are establishing and institutionalising standing national capacities for conflict prevention and resolution as extensions of their national governance framework. This article is a critical review of the efforts to establish such capacities in Kenya.

Keywords:

• conflict prevention; conflict resolution
• infrastructure for peace
• violence
• early warning
• capacity

Notes

¹ The authors were senior staff members of the United Nations Development Programme in Kenya and were closely associated with the efforts to build this standing national capacity The article is based on many primary materials produced by the NSC and UNDP, Kenya, interviews with many of the actors in Kenya, and on secondary materials, including publications on socio-political and economic events and trends in Kenya.

² One of the authors visited Kenya in November 2007. At the time, the newspapers were replete with cases of violence against political opponents in parts of the country. No one was arrested or prosecuted for the violence.

³ Concerned Citizens for Peace is a group of Kenyan civil society actors who got together immediately the violence began and mobilised the entire country in the search for an end to the political crisis. The original members were the late Dekha Ibrahim, Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat, George Wachira and Generals Sembeiywo and Daniel Opande.