Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Uhuru Kenyatta, during his swearing in as the 4th President of Kenya on 9th April 2013, promised economic transformation, national unity, free maternal care, and improved education standards. Kenyans welcomed these commitments. As he prepares to hand over power to the fifth president, it is important to reflect on the achievements and failures of the Jubilee administration under President Uhuru Kenyatta over the past ten years of his regime.
This report acknowledges that there have been important achievements, especially in infrastructure development, health access and promotion of rights of intersex persons. However, there have also been grave and consistent lapses in protecting Kenyans against human rights violations. Notable instances include the failure to operationalise the Public Benefits Organization Act (2013) and the introduction of the Security Laws Amendments (2014), which interfered with the independence of civil society organisations, key independent consititutional offices, and undermined freedom of assembly and expression.
Furthermore, despite persistent documentation, media publicity and actions by oversight agencies, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances have neither been eliminated nor reduced. The right to privacy and data protection for millions of Kenyans was repeatedly violated by government security agencies, including those responsible for population census and citizen registration programmes. Unconstitutional, forceful, and inhumane evictions of tens of thousands of Kenyans across informal settlements and forests within Kenya violated the victims’ right to adequate housing and livelihoods.
The Jubilee administration performed better in the right to health. The ten years of the Jubilee administration saw an increase in improved facilities across the country, especially in Nairobi. Catalysed by the existential threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the increased access to medical facilities and vaccines undoubtedly saved many lives in the second term of the administration. Corruption and public finance mismanagement, which were endemic in the first term, resurfaced in the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) scandal during the pandemic.
Reviewing five areas of rights and their twenty-three sub-themes, the scorecard holds that the Jubilee administration failed to realise critical human rights obligations to meaningfully enable all people to enjoy the fundamental freedoms and rights as envisaged in the Constitution of Kenya’s five critical areas. Various policy, legislative and institutional measures were under-resourced, minimised, or did not prioritise the public’s right to information and participation. The next administration is advised to frame its development and governance obligations within a human rights centred approach.
Covid-19 disrupted all areas of the economy and occasioned restrictions of freedoms and rights in ways only comparably to the state of emergency in the 1950s. This tested the Jubilee administration – and many other governments around the world – in ways that were impossible to predict before the pandemic.
Rampant corruption, wasteful public finance expenditure, and excessive borrowing crowded out valuable resources for essential services and the implementation of the Bill of Rights. A human rights-based budget analysis of the last five years demonstrates low social sector spending. In this regard, social protection, health, education, and water and sanitation averaged only 11% of the total budget, and a meagre 3% of GDP for the period 2018-2021. With increased debt servicing costs already crowding out 38% of the total budget and 63% of the total domestic revenues, these low investments in the social sector make the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights impossible to attain. Kenya currently has a poor ranking of 53 out of 120 countries in the global International Budget Partnership Kenya Annual Survey. The survey assesses the quality of public participation, budget transparency and oversight. It ranks Kenya sixth behind South Africa.
In just under two months, new national and county governments will face a debt-distressed and defaulting economy that is too weak to absorb the shocks of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. The cost of living will rise as the economy and national treasury coffers shrink. Fiscal austerity and economic kidogo-isation will lead to louder demands for more accountability, budget transparency, and decisive anti-corruption action by Kenyans.
Now dependent on sovereign credit ratings, IMF prescriptions and external financing, external pressures on Kenya for better public participation, budget transparency and oversight will also increase. Any failures in this regard will lead to a macro-economic meltdown, more distress-related crimes, tax evasion, and possibly public protests. Therefore, the incoming national and country administrations must prioritise, budget transparency, public participation, and oversight, as well as zero-tolerance for corruption.
Source: Amnesty International