April 2013

IIn Kenya, the nationwide election was held on March 4、2013. The election was said to be, ‘the most complicated election in the history of Kenya’ and it included six different levels of elections in total, such as Presidential, Congressional, and Governor. The total number of registered voters is 14.30 million and about 30 thousand voting stations were set throughout the nation.
The end of last year, many Kenyans made long lines for voter registration at the registration points which were located in shopping centers in Nairobi city. The Electoral Committee tried to facilitate voter registration by using SMS (Short Message Service) with the slogan ‘Take action. Don’t just criticize politicians! ’ Through these campaigns, the strength of Kenyans had been growing gradually.
Finally, Candidate Kenyatta won the presidential election by a hair after the bruising campaign for a few months against Candidate Odinga, the former prime minister. Although Mr. Odinga challenged the result according to the constitution, he finally accepted his loss based on the Supreme Court’s final decision. Most importantly, the election process passed off peacefully and there was not a repeat of the previous bloodshed, insurrection and conflicts.

Many kinds of activities to prevent uprising had been carried out before the election in Mathare slam in Nairobi, where JCCP has its project. These activities included forums that were organized by local people to have a dialogue about politics among each ethnic group. A promotion event with its slogan ‘Together united for peace’, succeeded to spread the message, and used traditional dances and short drama to spread the message of peaceful co-existence. In addition, forums were held for discussion of conflict resolution among elders and police in Mathare slam. This has become a new joint program for an improvement of the security situation. Kenyan police says that it was the first time they managed to establish good relationship with local people.


 
On March 7th, after the election, JCCP had reached an agreement on the 2nd terms of the Community Safety project with the Japanese Embassy in Kenya. Based on our good relationship among JCCP, local people and police in Mathare slam which was built during the first year of the project, JCCP will continue to improve the security in the community and try to pursue peace building at the grass roots level.

A team of JCCP Kenyan staff participated in the signing ceremony and are justly proud of being able to contribute to this visionary and pioneering peace building project.