It is now February 2012 and it has been four years since the extreme violence of the contested presidential elections caused the deaths of over 1,500 people and a further 600,000 forced to flee for their lives. Today, tens of thousands remain displaced, unable ot return home, forgotten by the government. The same government is now fighting its first cross-border war in Somalia.
Kenyans have been forced from their homes before; many of them have yet to return. Land grabbing by the first colonial and then Kenyan elite forced many from their traditional homelands. After the disputed results of the presidential elections in December 2007, violence broke out between ever-warring ethnic groups. Neighbour turned on neighbour, resulting in over 600,000 people loosing their homes. The age- old disputes over land, left simmering for decades, were the source of many of the battles fought in early 2008.
Many of those dispossessed decided to seek assistance in internally displaced peoples’ (IDP) camps, and were provided for by international aid agencies. Hundreds of millions of US dollars were donated by foreign governments to support them through the crisis. The others, almost half the displaced population, found shelter with families and friends, never registered and thus never supported. Some church organisations offered support to the sheltered families and then asked, successfully, foreign governments for support.
Some months later, the Kenyan government decided that the IDP camps were an eyesore and had them demolished. Many families were forcibly relocated, to new homes paid for by generous donors. Many were moved many miles away from the camps, where they had no land access and were thus forced to return on foot to the old camps, or start new ones.
To this date, there are still some 30,000 IDPs living in camps with no prospect of solving their dire situations. They remain, forgotten by aid agencies and by their own government. As Kenya troops move into Somalia, displacing Somali families, the displaced of Kenya will have to be patient.
Again.
