Yes, peace must be secured before push for justice after polls

In the wake of 2017 post-election upheavals in parts of Nairobi and Kisumu, many have questioned whether the persistent call to peace is at the expense of justice. This critique has centered on questions of use of power, conduct of the elections, and the shocking levels of police brutality, killings and destruction of property in the name of maintaining peace and security.

During the election process, we have seen a section of Kenyans who have persistently used the word “peace”— to mean avoidance of any form of overt confrontation. But this distorted notion of peace that supports political interests does not encourage recognition of the use of confrontation in pursuit of justice, which is the basis for real peace. On the other hand, we have a section of Kenyans up in arms demanding justice, and promising “no justice no peace” seemingly oblivious to the fact that peace needs to be secured before justice can be decided upon and carried out.

The attempt to prioritise peace over justice and vice versa based on political interests fails to appreciate the place of paradox in peacemaking. As renowned peace scholar John Paul Lederach once observed that, “the energy of the [irreconcilable] ideas is enhanced if they are held together, like two sides of a coin.” It means there is an order in which they should be actioned, but that this is a matter of sequencing rather than prioritising one over the other.

Among the lessons my organisation, Mercy Corps, has learned from working in countries emerging from violent conflict, is that peace must be secured before any other activity or process can be successfully undertaken. After the cessation of conflict, as a country recovers from the trauma and wounds of the past, it has to devise mechanisms for handling past human rights violations and ensure the dignity of victims is restored.

Youth economic empowerment programs have helped reduce patterns of horizontal inequality, resilience building programs in Northern Kenya are helping slow down environmental degradation, and support to county governments to ensure power is not used cynically or to dominate, but responsibly, knowing that generosity and beneficence builds trust is helping to improve governance—all of which make conflict less likely.

As Kenyans debate about justice and peace, we also need to re-examine the incentive driving our politicians to political leadership, which is missing from the current debate in Kenya, and that is corruption. The growth in concentrated political power in Kenya has led to a system that attracts political leadership that is largely driven by ease of accumulating wealth in the shortest time possible.

Corruption continues to fuel a vicious cycle of public sector debt and mass poverty in Kenya. A tragedy of corruption in Kenya, thus, is that citizens are repeatedly victimised. Their government borrows funds to make up for what officials stole from the public purse. The loans in turn are raided for corrupt purposes. The citizens who did not benefit from the borrowed funds are turned against each other, even as they are taxed for repayments irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds or political party affiliations.

Preconceptions or perceptions of corruption diminish enthusiasm for foreign and local investment, which reduces the ability of the country’s institutions to deliver the policies and programs envisioned in political party manifestos that, in many cases, are burdened by heightened popular expectations. Such high expectations, when dashed, provide fuel for the resumption of grievance that, in turn, leads to a do-or-die fight for political power and violent confrontations. Violence often reflects the collapse of governance, and corruption is a major cause of that breakdown.

At the extreme, it contributes to genocide, as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where corruption manifested through tribalistic nepotism. Before we dismiss peacemakers and deregister Human Rights agencies, we must re-examine our electoral system, and as a start, take into account and care for Victims of violence from past elections.

Deploying contingents of police to suppress protests may look fashionable, but few people believe that there is a police/military solution to the electoral conflicts we are facing as a country. People just want to see an end to these cycles of killings and injuries and destruction of property every election year.

-The writer is a conflict transformation specialist at Mercy Corps and Chief of Party for the Kenya Election Violence Prevention and Response Programme