Kenya

By Haru Mutasa in Africa on July 30th, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Dadaab camp in Kenya, the largest refugee camp in the world, is full. 

Opened in the early 90s, it was meant to hold 90,000 people, but it now 'houses' about 400,000 with many of the early arrivals still living in the camp. 

More people from Somalia stream in, escaping the prolonged drought and the conflict in their home country.

Dadaab is one of the poorest areas in Kenya. The heat is unbearable, it is dusty and the only vegetation is a few shrubs. It is depressing but it is home for thousands of Somalis.

They get tents, food, and water from aid agencies, the basics to survive until they can return home whenever peace returns to conflict-ridden Somalia.

As people try to find any patch of shade, under an aid worker's car for example, I look in the distance at buildings painted in white with their noticeable sky blue roofs.

Tags: Kenya, Somalia
By Azad Essa in Africa on July 7th, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Gerissa, Kenya - It takes a while to weave your way through the dusty streets of Nairobi and surface from the coagulated gunk that is the city's air.

The city confuses me.

In one moment it takes me home, further south the African coast, to Durban. And in the the next moment it startles me with an air of Delhi.

The orchestrated chaos of informal traders unwrapping their bright, fresh vegetables onto wooden tray tables beside oversized football shirts and mobile phone batteries would pass easily for a scene from Durban's central business district where messy informality and sneaky formality contest each other for the remaining vestiges of crucial business space.

But then, the area around Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta monument, opulently wide, with an affectation of stateliness, together with the perennial haze that hangs over the city skyline like a soiled sheet, takes me back to the Indian capital.

By Kristen Saloomey in Americas on November 10th, 2010
Photo from EPA

The New York jury deliberating in the trial of accused embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani has more than the defendant's fate in its hands. A guilty verdict, should there be one, is likely to revive the Obama administration's plans to try other Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts.

The US government contends Ghailani played a key role in the al-Qaeda plot to blow up American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The attacks killed 224 people, the vast majority of whom were in Kenya's capital Nairobi, and injured thousands.

Ghailani was indicted shortly after the bombings, but it wasn't until 2004 – after the September 11th attacks - that US authorities caught up with him in Pakistan.

By Omar Chatriwala in Americas on January 20th, 2010
Photos courtesy of Ushahidi

It's now more than a week since the Caribbean nation of Haiti was rocked by a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake, but the situation on the ground remains unstable, with people still being pulled from the rubble and the death toll continuing to rise.

With landlines in the country badly damaged, and ground transportation a significant problem, relief workers pouring into the country have had to turn to non-traditional means to try to get information from - and to - survivors of the quake.

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 7th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

The International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announced before leaving Kenya on Saturday that he had a “strong case” against key suspects in the violence that followed the 2007 Presidential elections.

He emphasised the importance of avoiding any more unnecessary delays and said he hoped to present two to three cases before judges at The Hague, possibly by July next year.

He agreed to an exclusive interview. This is my transcript:

Q: What is your assurance to Kenyan people after your visit here?

"Now I will go to the judges, it’s a judicial process, you have to understand that. The judges will decide if I can open up an investigation then I will be back.

I will go to the community, I will see the victims, I will listen to them. I have to collect the evidence.

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 5th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

Kenyan politics was to blame for the bloodbath in the wake of Presidential elections – and the politics of this country are also to blame for the absence of justice nearly two years later.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court plans to change that. But any hope he may have had in getting the active co-operation of the Grand Coalition formed as part of the peace deal that pulled Kenya back from the brink of civil war appear to have been dashed.

His hope had been for the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to formally request the ICC’s intervention, triggering an immediate opening of his inquiry. In a meeting that lasted less than an hour, that was not the case.

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