Somalia: Mission Possible

Two weeks ago, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council recommended that the mandated strength of its peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) be raised from 8000 to 20,000 troops. It also called on the international community to blockade Somali ports and enforce a no-fly zone over the country to interdict resupply for Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow the internationally recognized government.

As the UN mulls over this proposal, events on the ground continue to give an indication of the effect increased troop numbers can have.

Since 2007, AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi have been deployed in Mogadishu under both an AU and UN mandate and at the invitation of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Their task is to support the decade-long Somali peace process and the transitional institutions it has generated.

For much of this time, AMISOM has been seriously under-resourced and undermanned. Nonetheless, the troops succeeded in their foremost task of protecting the Transitional Federal Government from Al Qaida liked extremist groups who have foresworn the peace process. In July, however, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development resolved to send a further 2000 troops, bringing the AU mission to its mandated strength of 8000. By mid-August, half of the IGAD troops had been inserted into Mogadishu and the effect have been quick and dramatic.

In June, the TFG controlled just 5 districts in the capital. Now, with the support of the IGAD reinforcements the TFG has managed to gain ground and now controls nearly half of the capital’s 16 districts. The gains are all the more remarkable considering that they were made in the face of a so-called “terminal offensive” launched by the extremist group, Al Shabab during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

These successes have provided a springboard for the TFG to launch its long-awaited offensive to retake the rest of the country. Last week, the TFG and its allies captured Beled-Hawo, a southwestern Somali town near the Kenyan border, deep in the heart of al Shabaab territory - a huge blow to the insurgents’ image of invincibility. Government forces are now at the doorstep of the strategically important town of Beled weyne, Hiiraan’s regional capital, threatening the insurgents’ grip over South and Central Somalia.

The losses suffered by the insurgents have amplified clan divisions and disputes over command, the policy of denying access to humanitarian organizations trying to help the suffering population in Central and South Somalia, and the role of foreign fighters. According to the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank that monitors global security, the failure of the Ramadan offensive, led to “a major rift between Al Shabab’s emir, Sheikh Ahmad Abdi Godane and his deputy, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow.”

This is significant because, as US global security consultancy, Stratfor, says, it represents a split between the group’s nationalist and internationalist elements. According to Stratfor, Godane “is considered the leader of the internationalist elements, coordinating closely with foreign jihadists from al Qaeda who have joined its ranks over the last few years,” and is “responsible for propelling the Somali theater onto the global jihadist radar.”

Stratfor however notes that fighting to bring the global jihad to Somalia and basing such efforts in Somali territory is deeply unpopular, and the group has been at pains to hide their intentions under the guise of nationalism. A split with Robow, one of the more nationalist voices, and who had previously been replaced as the group’s spokesman in 2009 following his opposition to the policy of denying access to humanitarian organizations trying to help the suffering population, would not only significantly weaken Al Shabab, but also rob them of this platform.

Meanwhile, the TFG is exploiting the space created by the AMISOM deployment to deliver some services to people in Mogadishu and beyond. At the end of August, the Independent Federal Constitution Commission produced a draft constitution and submitted it to the people for consultation. The Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Nur, is rehabilitating roads, providing street lighting and rebuilding markets in the capital. He has recently submitted a 4 year plan for regenerating the city to our development partners, the first time this has ever been done.

The people of Mogadishu are voting with their feet, and most of the city’s 2 million people now live in areas controlled by the TFG, many having moved there to escape the ‘reign of terror’ offered by the al Shabab. Even in areas not yet under their control, the TFG is, according to Prof. Abdullahi Sheikh Ali, Minister of State for Planning and International Co-operation, working with community elders and non-governmental organisations to launch projects such as the rehabilitation of canals in Hiiran area and Middle Shabelle.

Much of this progress, though, is sadly undermined by continued political disagreements and wrangling within the government. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was deposed and the process of selecting a replacement has been afflicted with delays and held hostage to disputes between the President and the Speaker. However, it is instructive to note that, while regrettable, the conflicts within the TFG are being mediated through political and constitutional processes, a clear break from the past preference for violence and war.

All this has been achieved by the insertion of just 1000 extra soldiers. Imagine the impact of sending twelve times that number.

Kenyan Justice

Undoing Business in East Africa

Despite all the self-congratulatory back slapping that greeted the release of the Doing Business in the East African Community 2010 report, the document makes for depressing reading. Though not a total solution or yardstick, the DB reports are increasingly used as a leading measure to gauge the attractiveness of a nation as a place to do business and as a measure of competitiveness. For reform-minded governments, how much their indicators improve matters more than their absolute ranking. On this score, for EAC countries and the region as a whole, it is a case of one step forward and two backwards.

Although Kenya, the region’s economic powerhouse, has instituted comprehensive licensing reforms that have led to annual private sector cost savings of $62 million, and the country is ranked 4th out of 183 nations for “ease of getting credit,” the fact that Kenya’s overall rank, measuring the ease of doing business in the country, dropped from 84 in 2009 to 95 is more significant.

Compared to 2008 when Kenya was cited as one of the world’s top ten reformers in that year’s DB Report, the country’s ranking has actually plummeted 23 places. Similarly Uganda’s overall ranking also fell from 106 in 2009 to 112 this year and Tanzania’s from 126 to 131. Burundi only marginally improved from 177 to 176.

The lone exception was Rwanda which leapt to an overall position of 67 in the 2010 rankings, up from 143 in 2009. The top reforming country in the world, the country’s efforts have paid off as it attracted some $1.1 billion in investment, 41% more than in the previous year and this in the midst of the global economic crisis which saw global FDI inflows slide by up to 44% the first quarter of 2009.

Though there is widespread expectation that integration will lower the cost of doing business, in 2009 EAC secretary general Juma Mwapachu described it as "unnecessarily too high" saying it undermined international competitiveness of the region, This is borne out by the report which observes that if each East African country were to adopt the region’s best practice the region would rank 12th rather than 116th. In other words, if the best of existing East African regulations and procedures were implemented across the board, the business environment in the region would be comparable to that in Thailand which in the first quarter of 2009 alone garnered more than $2 billion dollars in investment, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Developments World Investment Report 2009.

The fact that needed reforms are in place in some but not all EAC countries inevitably calls into question the effectiveness of the regional integration experiment. In fact, though regional integration has long been touted as necessary for economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, the fact is Africa remains one of the most protectionist areas in the world. With 14 landlocked countries, only 10 percent of African exports are intraregional, according to the World Trade Organization. In contrast, intraregional trade in Western Europe, is 68 percent and in Asia hovers around 40%.

Under the EAC, the five countries have officially formed a free trade area and a customs union. The common market protocol, the next step on the route to full economic integration, is set to go into effect in less than a month’s time. It will supposedly allow the free migration of businesses and people across borders as the bloc prepares to move to a common currency by 2015. However, according to the Director General, EAC customs and Trade Directorate, Mr. Peter Kiguta, despite the successful elimination of internal tariffs among Partner States and consequent growth of intra-regional trade, the ratio to total volume of trade in EAC is still a paltry 13%. “We produce what we don’t consume and we consume what we don’t produce,” as President Jakaya M. Kikwete of Tanzania said recently in Dar es Salaam at the World Economic Forum on Africa.

Mutual suspicion between partner states may be to blame for this state of affairs. According to Nation Media Group CEO, Linus Gitahi, “it is much easier for a Chinese company to get licensed to do business in any of the East Africa countries than it is for any local companies moving across the borders. Many in government have what President Yoweri Museveni calls the ‘pygmy syndrome’-the idea that you are bigger than me and by supporting you, you will get bigger and bully me.”

The EAC states may have made strides in improving literacy, fighting AIDS and improving infrastructure but when it comes to governance, the parochial nature of the region’s politics has limited gains. Little is done to curb rampant corruption. Comparing EAC country rankings in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2009 to those from the previous year reveals that the problem either worsened or stagnated in all EAC countries except Rwanda, which registered a significant improvement.

Violence, intimidation and disputed results continue to be a feature of elections. In Burundi, whose abysmal ranking in the DB 2010 Report is reflected in a report by the African Development Bank which says the country “investment, production and commerce in the country are hindered by the political and institutional environment,” opposition parties have recently demanded a repeat of communal elections, alleging massive fraud and poll-rigging. Just last week, their candidates announced their withdrawal from this month’s presidential election. Kenya’s decline has been blamed on the post-election violence and creation of a coalition government, which slowed decision-making at a time when over 70% of the countries in the world are actively reforming.

The Global Competitiveness Index identifies 3 stages of economic development, the first driven by primary factors, such as unskilled labor and natural resources, and the others marked by increases in efficiency and innovation. The EAC region is firmly rooted in the baby-stage. To be competitive, EAC states must, in addition to improving infrastructure and creating a healthy and literate workforce, focus on developing well-functioning public institutions and a stable macroeconomic framework.

War and Peace-keeping

Si vispacem, para bellum is a well-worn Latin adage that translates as, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war." However to prepare for war, one must have an idea of the likely threats as well as which to prioritise. According to the Kenyan Ministry of Defence, the two-fold mission of the country’s armed forces, as defined by the Constitution, is “to deter aggression and should deterrence fail, defend the Republic; provide support to civil power in the maintenance of order.” But what does it mean to defend the Republic?

Kenya’s National Security Intelligence Services Act defines “a threat to national security” as espionage, sabotage, terrorism or subversion directed against the country’s interests; the destruction or overthrow of the constitutionally established system of the Government; violence promotinga constitutional, political, industrial, social or economic objective or change in Kenya; and “foreign-influenced activity” that is detrimental to the interests of Kenya.

Thus the military’s mandate does not preclude its intervening in internal matters to preserve and defend the state. In fact, the prospect of military intervention is domestic matters is not new in the region. Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have been host to numerous coups d’etat by the military establishment, in most cases to the detriment of society as the military administrations proved to be much worse than the civilian regimes they deposed. In fact, two of the region’s leaders, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, came to power via military force and thereafter sought to legitimize their rule through elections.

More recently, addressing an East African security meeting in October 2009, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni called for the creation of an East-African defence force to counter threats both from within and outside the region. And during Kenya’s post-election conflagration in 2008, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, drew the wrath of the Kibaki administration when he urged the Kenyan army into action saying that he did not oppose military intervention when “institutions have lost control”. Ironically, according to the Financial Times, President Kibaki had himself considered imposing a state of emergency but the army resisted, fearing a split in their own ranks.Instead the army preferred a low-key role, distributing food and opening up blocked roads, though on at least one occasion it did step in to separate fighting mobs. According to a paper by the Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director, Muthoni Wanyeki, Agenda Item One of the mediation processes contemplated the possibility of preventive military deploymentto immediately end the violence.

However, in its interventions, whether internally or facing an external foe the military falls under the same limitations as described by Jakkie Cilliers of the Institute for Defence Politics in the case of the South African Defence Force. “It is part of the executive arm of the Government. It therefore does not have autonomy of action, or unlimited scope in defining its own role in society at large, except in so far as such actions or roles support, and are within the guidelines of national policy and objectives.”

A paper by Carolyne Pumphrey for the US Department of Defence states that while the traditional view of national security is that it is concerned with the preservation of state sovereignty (most especially its monopoly of force) and the protection of national interests, these interests are not confined to countries’ borders. If one compares Kenya’s territory to its ecological footprint- the amount of resources the country needs to maintain itself- the latter is far larger than the former.Therefore a threat to the country’s ability to secure supplies from without its territory, such as that posed by Somali pirates to shipping destined for Mombasa is a threat to its national security.

While the military can be seen as an instrument available to a sovereign government to provide security for its citizens and defend the nation’s vital interests, in the 21st century it may be necessary to modify this traditional approach, for more and more in today’s world protecting a way of life has moved well beyond the use of military power. According to Col. Dan Smith and Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information, “interlocking if not competing political, economic, social, and environmental interests are tying together as never before the fate of sovereign states. In turn the freedoms of citizens in an ever growing number of nations are becoming intertwined in such a way that individual security is becoming increasingly linked to the achievement of security at the international level through the reciprocal implementation of policies driven by national priorities.” To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, insecurity anywhere is a threat to security everywhere.

Therefore, a new paradigm of security has emerged which stands the Westphalian system, and its designation of the nation-state as the focal point of security, on its head. Referred to as “human security,” it decrees that the individual (or the collection of individuals known as the nation) is supreme, and not the institutions of governance. In this conception, the military’s purpose is not the protection of the state but rather the citizen. Within this paradigm, it is easy to understand the Kenya military’s queasiness about the proposed declaration of emergency during the post-election conflict. As one person, at the time described by the Financial Times, as being close to the senior command, put it, “The question the army has been asking is, is this a legally elected government? If not, and they deploy, are they supporting a ‘civilian coup?’”

However, this should not be taken to mean that the army always behaves itself when it comes to civilians. It has been accused of systematic murder, torture and scores of other human rights abuses in its interventions to quell insurgencies in Sabaot and in the country’s restive North Eastern Province. Similarly, Uganda’s military was accused of terrorized the very civilians it was supposedly rescuing from the clutches of the psychopathic LRA.

Such tactics, which breed resentment and anger, do little to further the military objective of pacification, as the US and its allies are discovering in Iraq and Afghanistan. More and more, the talk there has moved from the macho “winning,” with its visions of tidy victories and foes who know when they are beaten, to the softer “winning hearts and minds,” which recognizes that insurgencies are not defeated by capturing cities and bridges, but by embracing the people. It is a lesson the AU is yet to learn in Somalia, where it strives to secure a feckless government instead of the suffering populace. In Iraq, the troop surge, an emphasis on capturing and holding cities instead of withdrawing to the relative safety of green zones, as well as engaging with locals bore fruit. The AU should consider doing the same in Somalia.

This does not mean that insurgencies should not be fought militarily. According to Jane’s Information Group, the terror strikes on US and Israeli targets in Kenya in 1998 and 2002 highlight the fact that the country is at risk of attack by international terrorists. The country's geographical location bordering the conflict zones of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan has also made it vulnerable to infiltration by neighbouring rebel groups for use as a rear base or transit country. Similarly, Rwanda is threatened by former genocidaires who are also causing chaos on the other side of the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The LRA continues to make Northern Uganda and parts of the DRC ungovernable. All these threats need to be met squarely and the countries should not shy away from military confrontation if such is called for.

But, whether it is confronting Al Shebbab on Kenya’s borders or the Interhamwe on Rwanda’s, the focus of policymakers should be to extend the fruits of peace to the populations that breed and host these elements. This might mean working with the more reasonable elements of these groups, or, in the extreme, direct military intervention. It would also require that the military starts to provide security and services to the beleaguered peoples on their side of the borders to prevent them falling under the spell of armed groups.

General Sir David Ramsbotham of the British Army notes that every military operation is, in itself, a man-made disaster because “the use of force is bound to result in damage, not just to life and limb but also to national infrastructures. Having inflicted or received that damage, the military are trained, equipped and accustomed to repairing it. Furthermore, they are accustomed to functioning under the Law of Armed Conflict, so conforming with the dictate of international law is not strange to them either.” Our troops, with the experience of policing war zones on other continents, should prove no less adept at doing it at home.

The Real Cost

Reading Under the Influence

Commuting Justice? Why We Need The Death Penalty

In what Prof. William A. Schabas of the Irish Centre for Human Rights described as “very likely the largest commutation of death sentences in modern history”, the President of Kenya in early August announced that all death row inmates would not be executed and that their sentences would be commuted to life imprisonment. This move elicited a rare cacophony of praise from both local and international commentators, organizations and governments. In his statement, Kibaki explained that he was acting to relieve the over 4000 inmates’ “mental anguish, suffering, psychological trauma, and anxiety”. Of course, nothing was said about the suffering that this, as well as other moves to abolish the death penalty, is likely to cause in the society as large.

While capital punishment has existed in almost all civilizations, across the world it is increasingly falling out of favour. According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Currently, more than half the world’s states have taken steps towards total or de facto abolition of the death penalty and apply life imprisonment for the most serious crimes. And less than half of the countries retaining the death penalty actually execute prisoners. In Africa, 11 countries, including Rwanda and South Africa have banned state sanctioned executions. And even those that haven’t are remarkably queasy about the whole affair. Tanzania has not executed anyone since 1994. Uganda, despite President Yoweri Museveni’s declaration that “we shall shoot anybody who kills a human being” has neither shot nor hanged anyone in a decade. In Kenya, while an average of 750 people are sentenced to death each year, none has been sent to the gallows since 1987.

Ever since it came to power, the Kibaki administration has sought to abolish the death penalty is spite of the overwhelming public support for it. In January 2003, two weeks into Kibaki’s first term, then Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Kiraitu Murungi, revealed plans to abolish capital punishment in the country by the middle of the year. A month later his boss ordered the freeing of 28 prisoners on death row and commuted the sentences of 195 others. Presiding over their release, then Vice President, Moody Awori, announced his intention to introduce a Bill in Parliament to abolish the death penalty, prompting the then Commissioner of Prisons, Abraham Kamakil, to declare his longing “for the day Parliament will remove the death penalty from our Constitution.”The sentence was still in the books when, in June 2005, Kiraitu again declared that the government was “committed to abolishing the death penalty”. It is a position which enjoys considerable cross-party support. The ODM’s William Ruto, has called the death penalty a "vengeful" sentence that served no helpful purpose and party secretary Prof. Anyang’ Nyongo has declared that "the death penalty is not a deterrent and should be abolished." Despite this seeming consensus, in August 2007 Parliament defeated a Motion, moved by Kasipul-Kabondo MP, Mr Paddy Ahenda, seeking to do exactly that.

In its Position Paper on the Abolition of the Death Penalty, the KNCHR lists its objections to capital punishment: the death penalty is the ultimate violation of human rights. It is a violation of the fundamental right to life, which the Government has pledged to protect under the Constitution and other international human rights instruments that it has ratified. Similarly, the death penalty amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which contravenes provisions of section 74(1) of the Constitution, the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

To support its position, the Commission advances several arguments. However, most of them dissolve when applied to other forms of punishment. For example, it declares that “the hallmark of a civilised society is arguably the acknowledgement of human worth and dignity at the core of which is the principle of the sanctity of life, which should be most protected under all circumstances.” The suggestion here is that those who favor the death penalty have a less than total regard for value of human life. Nothing could be further from the truth. More than 130 years ago, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill spoke eloquently on the issue before the English Parliament: "Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that of another is to show want of regard for human life. We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself."

Arguing against “the retributive eye-for-an-eye delivery of justice”, the KNCHR avers that “The use of (the) death penalty only lowers the standards of government to the mentality of the murderer itself; it only demonstrates that the government is not different from the murderer. We do not punish rape with rape, or burn down the house of an arsonist. We should not, therefore, punish the murderer with death.” If this argument were to be taken to its logical conclusion, then all forms of sanction would be declared immoral as all involve the denial of some fundamental right (life, liberty and property) which some criminal has previously denied to his victims. Prison terms, fines and community service require that we curtail the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms. Surely, abolishing all forms of punishment would be unlikely to deliver a society safe from crime. Secondly, to state that we cannot demand an-eye-for-an-eye recompense is to put the criminal himself in the position of determining what can or cannot be done to him. Since we do not wish to be like thieves, then society cannot take for itself a thief's hard earned property through a system of fines. The very act of thieving would thus deprive society of resort to this kind of punishment and kidnapping would automatically outlaw jail sentences. The criminals would be the new legislators.

The KHCHR believes that the death penalty does not address the victim’s pain and the suffering endured by the victim’s family since “whoever was murdered has no way of knowing and appreciating the punishment meted upon the offender.” This is a curious position to take considering that in the aftermath of the 2008 post-election violence and in answer to call for a general amnesty, the very same Commission declared its firm belief that “accountability for those accused of committing serious human rights violations…is a fundamental aspect of victims' rights to justice.” So which is which? Does the KNCHR believe that the dead have no right to justice?

The KNCHR’s objections to the application of the death sentence are similarly flawed. Take, for example, the sophistic argument that “enforcement of the death penalty amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment of the condemned person... In a de facto abolitionist state like Kenya, a person always lives in anxiety with the reality of death hanging over his or her head from the moment of sentencing.” What the Commission is really saying is that it is the failure to carry out death sentences that results in the prisoners’ (to quote Kibaki) “mental anguish, suffering, psychological trauma, and anxiety.”

Dealing with a similar situation, the Uganda Supreme Court in January ordered that all death sentences be carried out within three years. However instead of recommending that we abandon the de facto moratorium on executions, the KNCHR prefers that death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment. Are they seriously asking us to believe that this a morally superior alternative? Amnesty International, in a report titled Prisons: Deaths due to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions, declared that “prison conditions in Kenya are worse than in other African countries.” And this is how Wikipedia describes the situation in Kamiti Maximum Prison:

There is still no reliable water supply, with over 200 prisoners hauling buckets of water around daily. The inmates working in the ‘industry’ section are paid only 10 cents (kenya shilling) per day, as per the outdated 1940s legislation which rules the organisation. Within the prison, condemned "G" block is famed for its particularly brutal lifestyle, characterised by predatory sodomy and mobile phone confidence tricksters. The prison was built for 1400 prisoners, and it now houses over 3600 in conditions of unbelievable squalor… The authorities have banned any supplemental food…and malnutrition and ulcers have become far more prevalent.

Imprisoning someone for life under such conditions is surely “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.” In fact, the Tanzanian Court of Appeal, when considering the constitutionality of capital punishment in the case Republic v Mbushuu, quoted Paul Sieghart’s 1983 article in The International Law of Human Rights: “As human rights can only attach to living beings, one might expect the right to life itself to be in some sense primary, since none of the other rights would have any value or utility without it. But the international instruments do not infact accord it any formal primacy. International human rights law assigns a higher value to the quality of living as a process than to the existence of life as a state….the law tends to regard acute or prolonged suffering (at all events in cases where it is inflicted by others, and so it is potentially avoidable) as a greater evil than death, which is ultimately unavoidable for everyone.” From the human rights perspective, therefore, life imprisonment under the conditions prevailing in our prisons is a worse, not better, alternative to capital punishment.

The KNCHR paper also raises objections around the fallibility of our criminal justice systems and the irreversibility of death. The fear here is that we are bound to execute a few innocents. Again these objections dissolve when applied to other forms of punishment. If we insisted on an absolute measure of guilt (as opposed to the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard), then we would have no criminal justice system. And all punishments are inherently irreversible anyway. You cannot give back the years and opportunities that are denied someone who is wrongfully jailed or fined.

Concerning the deterrent value of capital punishment, the paper states: “There has been no proven correlation between the death penalty and deterrence of crimes and countries that still maintain the death penalty in their statutes have not seen a downturn in crime. A survey conducted by the UN in 1998 and later updated in 2002 found no correlation between the

death penalty and homicide rates. According to the study, the hypothesis that capital punishment deters crime to a greater extent than does the application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment is flawed. In Kenya, for instance, the fact that death sentences are handed down has not deterred commission of crimes for which such sentences are implemented. The key to deterrence is not to apply the death penalty but to increase the likelihood of detection of crime, arrest and conviction.”

However, even here the KNCHR fails to see the wood for the trees. The fact is one would not expect studies to show a deterrent effect if executions are not carried out. The results of study conducted by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul H. Rubin of Emory University and Joanna M. Shepherd of Clemson University suggested that capital punishment when actually employed has a strong deterrent effect; each execution prevents, on average, 18 murders. Another study by H. Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado at Denver and R. Kaj Gittings of Cornell University looked at all death sentences handed out in the United States between 1977 and 1997 and matched that with state-level criminal activity in the relevant time frame. Their results show that each additional execution decreases homicides by about five. More worryingly, each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount, while an additional removal from death row generates one additional murder.

While the Kenya situation obviously differs from that in the US, we all have to be concerned about the possibility that by commuting the more 4000 death sentences to life imprisonment, President Kibaki may well have signed the death warrants of up to 20,000 innocents. As Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule state in their paper Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs: “If the current evidence is even roughly correct, then a refusal to impose capital punishment will effectively condemn numerous innocent people to death. States that choose life imprisonment, when they might choose capital punishment, are ensuring the deaths of a large number of innocent people.” Surely, the first obligation of every government is the protection of its citizens. As John McAdams of Marquette University’s Department of Political Science puts it, "If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call."

Animoil Farm

Uganda's Antoinette

Kampala Redistricting

Shipwreck at Migingo