Abstract
Following the announcement of disputed results of the December 2007 general election in Kenya, riots and inter-communal violence broke out across the country. The international community mobilised to repair the damage to Kenya’s democratic institutions, and to seek to provide some measure of accountability for the violence. The transitional justice model deployed in Kenya relied heavily on the development of a new Constitution, as a way to remake Kenya’s democratic institutions, and to provide mechanisms to address the gender imbalance in parliament, and government appointments. This chapter examines the 2010 Constitution, and its focus on women’s representation through the 2/3 Gender Principle, not only in the context of the post-election violence (PEV), and as a product of a liberal peacebuilding agenda; but against the local history of colonial and independence constitutional reform, and the history of Kenyan women’s political participation. I question the ability of the liberal peace framework, and human rights ideals more broadly, to challenge both Kenya’s patriarchal public life and Kenyan women’s own ambivalent relationships with their citizenship rights.
Kenny and Ochieng, interviewing Pillars of Kibera Women’s Group (Kibera, 11 October, 2012).
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Notes
- 1.
With Condolezza Rice, Graca Machel, Benjamin Mkpapa and African Union chairman and then Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete (KNCHR 2008, 34).
- 2.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) was founded in 1991 and registered in Kenya in 1994 as a national non-governmental organisation (NGO). Kenya did not have a national human rights commission until Mwai Kibaki established the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights in 2003. The current Kenya National Commission for Human Rights was re-established under art. 59 of the 2010 Constitution.
- 3.
A 2015 Ipsos MORI survey of 1002 Australians found only 65% of Australians surveyed ‘had heard of the Australian constitution’.
- 4.
Multipurpose fabric sheets used by women to tie babies to their backs while working, or travelling.
- 5.
Similar in form and function to a leso, ‘kanga’ can also refer to the pattern printed on a leso.
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Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the Australian Federation of Graduate Women (AFGW) for their support through the Georgina Sweet Fellowship, the British Institute of East Africa (BIEA) and the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) for their grants and support. I also acknowledge the KHRC and my colleagues there for their support during my time in Kenya; as well as the support and commitment of my translators and facilitators, Camilla Mwenda, Joseph Ochieng and Caren Omanga; and my research assistants Alfred Anangwe and Lyons Njenga. Asanteni sana, sana, marafiki wangu. I also acknowledge all the women who took the time to speak with me, often walking for hours to attend our meetings to share their concerns and strategies, who acted as translators for each other where we were communicating across local language groups, and without whose goodwill and patience this research would have been impossible. I also appreciate Sam Balaton-Chrimes’ generous comments on an earlier draft.
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Kenny, C. (2019). ‘Women Are Not Ready to [Vote for] Their Own’: Remaking Democracy, Making Citizens After the 2007 Post-Election Violence in Kenya. In: Shackel, R., Fiske, L. (eds) Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77890-7_14
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