Jul 22, 2009

Sponsor: NED

Kenya on the Brink:  Democratic Renewal or Deepening Conflict?

Download agenda :: PDF

Opening address by Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ) :: video

Luncheon address by Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson :: video :: speech

Two panels featuring experts, activists and a delegation of Kenyan parliamentarians, including Hon. Kenneth Marende, Speaker of the Parliament of Kenya
Panel I :: video 
Panel II :: Video

Kenya continues to struggle with the consequences of the disputed December 2007 elections, including the massive post-election violence and deep political divisions despite the Government of National Unity. As Kenya begins a renewed effort to amend in a meaningful way its constitution and to prepare for the elections that are scheduled for 2012, it faces an historic challenge: Can its leaders summon the political will for undertaking fundamental reforms, or will Kenya—with troubling implications for the entire East Africa region—inexorably return to the pattern of chauvinism, violence, and corruption that cost hundreds of lives, crippled the economy, and severely tarnished its reputation as an emerging democracy and a stable ally of the United States?

On the occasion of a visit to Washington by a delegation of Kenyan legislators, including the Speaker of the Parliament Kenneth Marende, the conference will address this challenge and also examine the role of the Kenyan legislature in the context of a unity government trying to grapple with the tensions that were released in the aftermath of the last elections.

The National Endowment for Democracy, which (along with its core party, business and labor institutes) is actively engaged with Kenyan partners, is honored to host this conference and does so in the hope that it will contribute to strengthening democracy in Kenya. :: more

Biographies of Speakers:

Joel Barkan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and senior associate at CSIS. A specialist on issues of democratization and governance across Anglophone Africa, he served as the first regional democracy and governance adviser for eastern and southern Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), from 1992 to 1994. Since then, he has straddled the worlds of academia and policy by consulting extensively for USAID, the UN Development Program, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and the World Bank. Dr. Barkan has been a visiting fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the University of Cape Town, and the National Endowment for Democracy. He has written extensively on democratization and governance, including articles in Foreign Affairs, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Democracy, and World Politics. He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in political science and African studies from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Stephanie Blanton currently serves as Regional Program Director for Africa, overseeing programs in Angola, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Somaliland, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In 2005, Blanton served as Resident Country Director for IRI’s Sudan program and was responsible for opening a field office in southern Sudan where she managed a political party strengthening, legislative development and coalition building program after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Blanton moved to Sudan after spending more than a year in Lilongwe, Malawi, where she opened IRI’s field office and oversaw a pre-election political party strengthening program. She originally joined IRI as Resident Program Officer in Nigeria and was part of IRI’s election observation mission for Nigeria’s 2003 elections. In addition, she organized and participated in IRI election observations of the 2007 Nigeria elections as well as the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. She has also monitored parliamentary elections in Somaliland and conducted IRI program assessments in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea. A graduate of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, Blanton has a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Johnnie Carson was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, the administration's senior Africa policymaking position, on May 7, 2009. Carson's Foreign Service career includes ambassadorships to Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda; and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs. Earlier in his career he had assignments in Portugal, Botswana, Mozambique, and Nigeria. He has also served as desk officer in the Africa section at State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Staff Officer for the Secretary of State, and Staff Director for the Africa Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives. Before joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Carson was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania. Ambassador Carson is the recipient of several Superior Honor Awards from the Department of State and a Meritorious Service Award from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The Centers for Disease Control presented Ambassador Carson its highest award, "Champion of Prevention Award," for his leadership in directing the US Government's HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in Kenya. He has a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Drake University and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the School of Oriental and Africa Studies at the University of London.

Jennifer Cooke is director of the CSIS Africa Program, which she joined in 2000. She works on a range of U.S.-Africa policy issues, including security, health, conflict, and democratization. She has written numerous reports, articles, and commentary for a range of U.S. and international publications. With J. Stephen Morrison, she is coeditor of U.S. Africa Policy Beyond the Bush Administration: Critical Challenges for the Obama Administration (CSIS, 2009),as well as a previous volume Africa Policy in the Clinton Years: Critical Choices for the Bush Administration (CSIS, 2001). Previously, she worked for the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, as well as for the National Academy of Sciences with its Office of News and Public Information and its Committee on Human Rights. Cooke has lived in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central Africa Republic and speaks French. She earned an M.A. in African studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Barbara Haig is Vice President for Program, Planning and Evaluation at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she has worked since 1985. She oversees NED staff responsible for the programmatic development, monitoring and evaluation of the Endowment's international grants program, which covers six regions of the world. In recent years, she has overseen a vast expansion of the Endowment's program in the Middle East, especially Iraq, and Afghanistan. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, she oversaw the development and implementation of several large and complex democracy programs funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in South Africa, Nicaragua and Central and Eastern Europe. From 1981 to 1985, she was Special Assistant to the Associate Director of Programs, and then to the Director, of the United States Information Agency. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has studied or worked in Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

Hon. Gitobu Imanyara is serving his first term as a Member of Parliament for the Imenti Central Constituency and is also a member of the Speaker’s panel and the Pan-African Parliament. Imanyara is the Party Leader for the Chama Cha Uzalendo Party of Kenya, and prior to that he was heavily involved in the democratic struggles with the former KANU regime. He is a lawyer and founder of the Nairobi Law Monthly. He is also the 1993 recipient of NED’s Democracy Award.

Hon. (Prof.) Margaret Kamar is serving her first term as Member of Parliament for the Eldoret East Constituency. She is also a member of the Speaker’s panel, Budget Committee, and the Kenyan Women Parliamentary Association. Previously, she was elected to be a Member of the East African Legislative Assembly, and served as the Deputy Chancellor, Research & Extension at Moi University in Kenya as a soil scientist.

Maina Kiai is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). He was also the Founding Executive Director of the nongovernmental Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), where he led the revitalization of the constitutional reform process in Kenya. He has served as Africa Director at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International and Director of Africa Programs at the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, DC (now called Global Rights). Additionally, he was named Jurist of the Year in 2005 by the International Commission of Jurists. He also is a steering committee member of the World Movement for Democracy and a member of the Management Committee of the African Democracy Forum, the World Movement’s Africa regional network.

Hon. Jeremiah Kioni is serving his first term as a Member of Parliament for Ndaragwa constituency. He is also a Member of the Parliamentary Committee on Defense and Foreign Relations, Standing Orders Committee and Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Activities of Unlawful Organizations. He is one of the only Members to voluntarily offer to have his allowances taxed. He previously worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Works, Housing and Physical Planning before opening his own firm, Ng’ayu and Associates.

Hon. Kenneth Marende is the sixth speaker of the Kenya National Assembly, the chairman of the Parliamentary Service Commission, which oversees Parliament, and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. Prior to being voted Speaker, Marende served two terms as a Member of Parliament for the Emuhaya Constituency. He also served on various committees, including the Standing Orders Committee, Committee on Administration of Justice and Legal Affairs and Select Committee on the Review of the Constitution in the 9th Parliament. He was awarded the Elder of the Golden Heart by President Kibaki for his service to Kenya.

Makau Mutua is Dean, SUNY Distinguished Professor and the Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. He is the Director of the Human Rights Center and teaches international human rights, international business transactions, and international law. He was educated at the University of Nairobi, the University of Dar-es-Salaam, and at Harvard Law School, where he obtained a Doctorate of Juridical Science in 1987. In 2002-03, Professor Mutua was appointed by the Government of Kenya as Chairman of the Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission. At the same time, he was a delegate to the National Constitutional Conference, the forum that produced a contested draft constitution for Kenya. Additionally, Professor Mutua was the Associate Director at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. He was also the Director of the Africa Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. He serves as the Chairman of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and sits on the boards of several international organizations, such as Global Rights, and academic journals, such as the Leiden Journal of International Law.

Susan Page is NDI’s regional director for Southern and East Africa. She joined NDI with 15 years of field experience working throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with the U.S. State Department, USAID and the United Nations. From 2005 to 2007, Susan directed the Rule of Law program for the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). Susan provided legal and constitutional advice to all parties involved in the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Before focusing on Sudan, Susan headed the Justice and Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Development Program in Rwanda. Earlier in Kigali, Susan spent two years as the political officer at the U.S. embassy where she was the primary source of information and analysis on Rwandan judicial and human rights matters for the U.S. government and drafted 1999 and 2000 U.S. State Department Human Rights Reports for Rwanda. She spent five years working in USAID regional offices in Kenya and Botswana on a variety of issues. Susan is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Donald M. Payne was recently elected to his eleventh term as Representative of the 10th District of New Jersey in the U.S. Congress. In 2003, President Bush appointed Payne as one of two members of Congress to serve as a Congressional delegate to the United Nations and reappointed him in 2005 to an unprecedented second term. In the 110th Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Congressman Payne to serve on the House Democracy Assistance Commission. He is also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, where he serves as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health and as a member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight. He was one of five members of Congress chosen to accompany President Clinton and Hillary Clinton on their historic six-nation tour of Africa. He has served on the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, TransAfrica, Discovery Channel Global Education Fund, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark. He has received numerous awards and honors from national, international and community-based organizations, including the Visionaries Award bestowed by the Africa Society and the Democracy Service Medal by the National Endowment for Democracy. A graduate of Seton Hall University, he pursued graduate studies at Springfield College in Massachusetts.