BY NZAU MUSAU
Monday, January 27, 2014
THE African Union has listed the move by the Kenyan High Court to stop a planned government refugee relocation program as one of 2013's human rights success cases in Africa.
The government had given the orders to relocate all refugees living in urban areas back to camps. The orders to this effect were issued in December 18, 2012 and January 16 2013 following spates of terror attacks.
However last July, High Court judge David Majanja nullified the directives saying they threatened the rights and fundamental freedoms of the refugees as vulnerable group of society.
Kituo Cha Sheria and seven refugees had moved to the court to challenge the directive which also required UNHCR and other agencies to stop providing direct services to asylum seekers and refugees in urban areas.
"The decision of the Kenyan High Court on July 26, 2013 which quashed a government plan to move 55,000 mostly Somali refugees from Nairobi and other cities to camps on the basis that the relocation would violate the right of the refugees to dignity, free movement, and would be tantamount to indirectly forcing them to go back to Somalia," the 35th report of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights says.
The report has been tabled at the ongoing Twenty-Four Ordinary Session of the AU's Executive Council which begun on January 21 and is ending on January 28 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
It is the only Kenyan positive mentioned in the report. Although the report mentions conduct of peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections in Cameroon, Guinea, Swaziland, Madagascar, Mali, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, it does not mention Kenya's own historic March 4 poll.
In "areas of concern" the report lists "continued existence in some member states of laws that criminalize certain types of speech, which are used to punish legitimate critical self expression, as well as violence again human rights defenders, journalists and other media practitioners."
Kenya has just passed sets of anti-media and anti-NGO laws which are considered draconian by practitioners but which the government claims are harmless to responsible practitioners.
Other "lows" indicated in the report include continued targeting of people living with albinism, prevalence of female genital mutilation practices, poor mental health-care, continued use of death sentence, deepening levels of poverty and increased acts of terror and violence in the continent.
Source: The Star