Transitional Justice in Kenya? An Assessment of the Accountability Process in Light of Domestic Politics and Security Concerns

A Journal article by Dr.Thomas Obel Hansen, Assistant Professor of International Relations in USIU- AfricaThe field of transitional justice has expanded beyond dealing with accountability, truth, victims' redress, and a number of related issues in the context of democratization processes. It now addresses a much wider variety of cases where the international community, states, local communities, or other actors implement various measures to confront (sometimes still ongoing) human rights abuses and other forms of injustices. 1 While early transitional justice scholarship focused primarily on the judicial and quasi-judicial processes launched to deal with massive human rights abuses following a fundamental political transition,2 scholars now increasingly seem to expect that transitional justice mechanisms will bring about transformation-political or otherwise.3 Yet, it is often unclear what purposes transitional justice serves, how the use of these mechanisms impacts the prospects of transition, and which stakeholders promote or discourage the establishment of transitional justice processes.' Using the Kenyan government's reaction to the 2008 post-election violence as a case study, this article examines some important aspects of transitional justice in Kenya. More specifically, the article identifies and discusses the drivers and obstacles to accountability for the post-election violence as well as the question of how the use of accountability measures may impact the prospects of a meaningful transition in the country. In Kenya, the process of establishing a political settlement to the disputed 2007 general elections was combined with efforts to create a number of mechanisms aimed at addressing the country's legacy of political violence.5 Though these accountability, truth-seeking, and reform measures have generally been conceptualized within a transitional justice paradigm,6 arguably there has been no fundamental (political or otherwise) transition in the country, and it is disputed whether such a transition is likely to take place in the near future.7 Little is known of how the absence of a fundamental political transition has affected the pursuit of transitional justice in Kenya.8 Furthermore, there has only been limited engagement with the question of how the various transitional justice measures in the country impact the political landscape and the possibility of a transition9 - here understood to concern political change as well as peaceful transformation. Focusing on accountability measures, this article sets out to explore these gaps in the literature. First, this article analyzes how the absence of fundamental transition has impacted the pursuit of accountability for the 2008 post-election violence. Second, this article explores how the accountability process impacts domestic politics and security