24 June 2008
Nairobi — The resettlement programme for persons displaced by the post-election violence is not going on as smoothly as could have been hoped.
We are getting an increasing number of stories about people going back to their homes only to face threats of fresh attacks. In some instances, the threats have been serious enough to force the returnees back into refugee camps.
It is one thing for the Government to promise security and provide the means of transporting people from the internal refugee camps back to the homes they had been forced to abandon. But it is another proposition altogether to repair the shattered relationships between the various communities. What we are seeing reinforces the view that for resettlement to succeed, there must first be reconciliation at the very basic village level between the communities driven apart by political differences.
This is a point that was stressed by some leaders in Rift Valley Province just ahead of the launch of the resettlement programme, but it was largely ignored because the call was seen as attempted blackmail by a group of politicians keen to exploit the fate of the refugees for political ends.
That may well have been the case at the time, but subsequent events are proving that a Government-mandated programme will not work well unless it is part of an overall reconciliation process. It may well be true that politicians will still take advantage of the situation to drive their own agenda; but as long as the point is made that the returnees cannot settle in peace unless some local grievances are resolved, them the logical step is address those issues. It might be easy to say that if there are individuals stoking the fires of continued ethnic wars, they should be dealt with in accordance with the law.
But the fact is, we are in a less-than-ideal situation. The Government has neither the resources nor the manpower to guarantee security in every little hamlet in the affected areas.
Security will be guaranteed, not by police and other organs of State, but by genuine reconciliation.
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