Author: NLM Correspondent

By Calvine Oredi A State’s ability to protect victims and witnesses is a fundamental issue for effective investigation and prosecution of crime. It is particularly salient in the context of prosecutions of organised criminal, gang and terrorist groups, who have the means and the motivation to intimidate and harm potential witnesses in order to prevent them from cooperating with law enforcement and judicial authorities. The protection of victims and witnesses is important too, in regard to prosecutions of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The Witness Protection Act, Cap 79 Laws of Kenya, provides for the protection…

By Jane Wachira In 2016 during the interviews for Chief justice, one of the applicants, Prof Makau Mutua, was hard pressed to explain a tweet from 2013 in which he vowed never to recognise Uhuru Kenyatta as president. The tweet, which was made in 2013, read, “I CAN’T and WON’T recognize Uhuru Kenyatta as President…” Evidence of the said tweet was pulled from his twitter account and was a key subject of his interview. Political figures, celebrities and ordinary persons have had their skeletons from ages ago unearthed from the depths of the Internet. Secrets and misdeeds of the past…

By Dennis Ndiritu The Miller-Keane Encyclopaedia of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health 7th Edition 2003, describes conscientious objection as an appeal to conscience in refusing to do or seeking exemption from acts that threaten a person’s sense of integrity. Luisa Cabal, Monica Arango et al, in Striking a balance: Conscientious Objection and the Reproductive Health Care from the Columbian perspective, (2015) conceive it as the refusal to participate in an activity that an individual considers incompatible with his/her religious, moral, philosophical, or ethical beliefs. The right to conscientious objection is founded on human rights, to act according to individuals’ religious…

By Alexander Opicho Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller introduced the concept of economic cannibalisation in management studies. They used the word cannibalisation to describe how some securities in a portfolio cause others to loose market value so that the portfolio or capital structure of the firm can achieve the highest overall value. As a result, the financial system of a firm experiences a degree of commercial autophagy – one investment eating another investment – so that an entire system is enabled to survive to a higher value. This can look strange but it happens. It happens biologically and is now…

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…