Author: NLM Correspondent

By Daniel Benson Kaaya There is a time for the whip and a time for the feather. This is, most definitely, a time for the whip! The ban on the use, manufacture and importation plastic bags used for commercial and household packaging in Kenya, though long overdue, is a plausible path towards environmental conservation. In most developing countries, plastic is one of the prevalent environmental pollutants. Consequently, if unbridled, the environment is infinitely ruined. Naked ambition and ruthless determination is important in ensuring the environment is protected for now and the future. There are arguments that plastic-making factories employ many…

By Kenyatta Otieno Early this year, the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) announced that it would not receive the 1% of total project cost as assessment fees for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It was song to EIA/EA experts, as this will mean more money and ease of doing business. Then, a few weeks ago, there was a report in the newspapers that the government will rescind the decision and go back to collecting about Sh800 million per year through Nema. This led me to another gazette notice by CS for Environment, through Nema, that beginning September 2017, after a six-month…

BY NLM WRITER The Nairobi Outreach Services is a community-based outreach programme that responds to HIV among drug users – especially indigent injecting drug users in Nairobi – by reducing the bio-medical, psychological and social harms from their drug use. NOSET employs controversial yet successful methods such the distribution of syringes to drug users. This has seen them targeted by law enforcement agents and biased reporters who misunderstand their efforts. Despite concerted efforts by organisations the State and other concerned agencies, drug abuse persists as a destructive phenomenon. The Nairobi Law Monthly spoke to NOSET’s Caleb Angira to find out…

By NLM Reporter Criminalisation of petty offences in Kenya has, over time, provided a basis for gross violation of the human rights of poor and vulnerable populations, especially in cities and major urban centres. Even after the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, hundreds of thousands of hawkers, touts, commercial sex workers, debt defaulters and street urchins face punishment, extortion, deprivation and violence at the hands of law enforcement agencies. And, through a new law and policy research titled “Law and Policy on the Petty Offences and Practices Affecting Populations at the National Leven and in Kisumu, Mombasa and…

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity” ― Frantz Fanon “We live in a country where our young ladies who have recently attained the age of puberty cannot afford sanitary pads, but our men and women in public offices have ipads which they do not even know how to use” ― P. L.O. Lumumba By its nature and substance democracy in contemporary Kenya is self-falsifying. Critically, I posit, it is democratic in being undemocratic in the very essence. The “rose” of Kenyan democracy blooms and engulfs the nation joyfully, while, at some bleak…

By Martin Nyakundi o’Barimo The general elections are scheduled to be held in Kenya on August 8, in which voters will be required to elect the president and his deputy, women representatives, members of the senate and the National Assembly, governors and ward representatives. This is in line with the provisions of Article 1 of the Constitution to the effect that: “All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and shall be exercised only in accordance with the Constitution”. Further, Article 1 (2) provides that the people may exercise their sovereign power either directly or indirectly or through their…

BY DAVID DICOSTA “We have not neglected you. We have given you a Cabinet Minister and Chief Justice” – President Uhuru to the Abagusii. It is election time and tensions, more so fear of the unknown in the two camps of those seeking to retain power and the ones strategizing to wrestle it from the incumbents’ jaws, are understandably at fever pitch. It is especially so for those in power, as they never fathomed the possibility of the fragmented, disillusioned Opposition figureheads reuniting into a formidable coalition, presenting a real challenge to the status quo. It is also understandable that…

By Isaac Swila For the last one year, debate has raged on the future of the Kenyan Senate, with the National Assembly even making subtle threats to have it scrapped out. As if that is not enough, a number of the wise old men in the Senate have now thrown their hats in the ring for gubernatorial positions in the August 8 polls, signifying their desire to quit the August House to head counties. Flash back to 2010, at promulgation of the current Constitution, which ushered in a bicameral parliament; many thought that, like in mature democracies, such as Germany…

STANDING on a muddy patch of grass in Mathare, a district in the eastern part of Nairobi, Kevin surveys his handiwork. From an electricity pylon, a thick bundle of crudely twisted wire hangs down into a tin-roofed shack. From there it spreads to a dozen more. Single wires run perilously at eye level over open sewers, powering bare light-bulbs, kettles and blaring speakers. In exchange for a connection, Kevin and six of his friends collect 200 shillings per month each from about a hundred shacks in his corner of the slum. To protect the business, the gang pays off police…

By Fuad Abdirahman Aden Duale is an anxious man. His influence is on the wane. The entry of Farah Maalim into the Garissa Township MP race significantly threatens his chances of another stint as MP. In his homecoming party at the Islamic school of Salam in Garissa months after he was sworn in as MP, Duale will be remembered for blasting the teachers who had organised the event for “choosing their son Maalim over him. “…Now that Uhuru has given me a bigger job, you want my support,” he rapped. Unimpressed, one of the teachers is alleged to have warned…