Assessing Democracy Assistance: Kenya

Assessing Democracy Assistance:

Kenya1

Jeroen de Zeeuw

Programme Officer / Policy Advisor at Cordaid

This report is FRIDE's contribution to a project entitled `Assessing Democracy Assistance' that is being carried out by the World Movement for Democracy. The project aims to gather views on how democracy support can be improved and its impact enhanced. Other case studies and a synthesis report can be found at .

Project Report Assessing Democracy Assistance

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In early 2008 Kenya was almost on the brink of an all-out civil war after the outcome of a heavily disputed presidential election led to largescale violence between the country's main ethnic groups. During eight weeks of both ostensibly spontaneous and more organised political violence in January and February 2008, more than 1,300 people were killed and an estimated 650,000 internally displaced.2 Despite a long history of election-related violence in Kenya, the speed and intensity of the attacks were unprecedented and shocked the world. The postelection crisis made it clear that the country that had been described as a `beacon of stability and democratic hope in a region of chaos and authoritarianism' actually had a highly unstable political system; a system controlled by power-hungry politicians that failed to address the structural problems of extreme socio-economic inequalities, rising crime, corruption and impunity pervading Kenyan society.3

Only after intense pressure from international actors led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and threats of personal sanctions against senior Kenyan politicians did the two opposing parties ? the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) ? agree to a power-sharing agreement. The so-called National Accord established a new `Grand Coalition' in which PNU leader Mwai Kibaki became President and ODM leader Raila Odinga was appointed as Prime Minister. As a result, violence subsided and a National Dialogue and Reconciliation process was started. However, almost two years later those responsible for the violence have still not been prosecuted and its root causes (the so-called Agenda 4 of the National Accord)

1 The project `Assessing Democracy Assistance' is supported by the United Nations Democracy Fund, the UK Department for International Development, the Arab Democracy Foundation, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The research methodology for this report is explained in an appendix at the end of the main text. Responsibility for this report and the views expressed are solely those of the author(s), and do not necessarily represent the positions of either FRIDE, the World Movement for Democracy, or the funders. 2 See Philip Waki, Gavin McFadyen and Pascal Kambale, `Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence' (CIPEV, 2008). 3 With the richest 10 per cent of the population earning approximately 42 per cent of the national income, Kenya has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world.

Project Report: Assessing Democracy Assistance

May 2010

continue to be ignored.4 While local civil society organisations and international agencies are grappling with the adjustment of their programmes to the fragile post-2008 context, the majority of Kenya's politicians continue with the same old `wheeling and dealing' of tribal coalition politics.

In all fairness, the political reform process is continuing and significant progress has been made in the last year or so with the constitutional review process. Moreover, Kenya today is a much more democratic country than it was in the early 1990s, despite the post-election violence of early 2008. Nevertheless, the country remains deeply divided and prone to conflict. With continuing large numbers of disillusioned, unemployed youth and recent reports about the re-arming of ethnic militias, the risk of a new outbreak of violence is still considerable.

This report analyses the role of international agencies in Kenya's faltering democratisation process and assesses the impact of different types of international engagement since the 2002 elections.It highlights the various governance challenges in Kenya, especially in the context of the 2008 election crisis, and gives an overview of the large number of international actors and aid programmes working in the field of democracy and governance assistance. The paper discusses the main instruments used by the international community to improve aid effectiveness, including coordination, conditionality and basket funding. Most importantly, it presents an assessment of the impact of international democracy assistance based on the views and experiences of key local stakeholders as well as the recipients themselves of aid programmes. Finally, particular attention is given to three key areas of international democracy support, including governance and justice sector reform, strengthening parliament and political parties, and civic education.

The report makes three key points. First of all, it shows that strong fluctuations in the level of critical engagement and assistance from the international community have given a mixed message to consecutive Kenyan governments, each of which has failed to follow through initial democratic reforms due to an absence of political will. Secondly, it argues that the focus of international assistance programmes on Nairobi-based elites and specialised NGOs has come at the expense of more community-oriented, traditional civil society actors with large memberships. Finally, the report argues that the current design of aid modalities (such as basket funding) and organisational profiles of many aid agencies fall short of what is required in terms of the flexibility and political savvy needed to support democracy in Kenya today.

A history of shallow democracy

Between independence from Britain in 1963 and the early 2000s, Kenyan politics were dominated by the Kenyan African National Union (KANU). Under both the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, initial political freedom was severely curtailed and opposition party activism violently suppressed. Rivalries between the more than 40 ethnic groups over access to natural and political resources (land and water but also government funds) were controlled by an intricate system of divide and rule and forcefully kept in check through the provincial administration, police and other branches of the state security apparatus.

In the early 1990s, President Moi capitulated to strong domestic and international pressure to end Kenya's de facto one-party system. In 1991 a constitutional amendment introduced a more pluralist political system and paved the way for the first multiparty legislative and presidential elections in 1992. The elections were deeply flawed, characterised by poor organisation, a high incidence of violence, and an uneven playing field. These irregularities, in combination with damaging splits in the opposition, enabled KANU and President Moi to hold on to power in 1997 as well. By the end of the 1990s, civil society organisations, opposition parties and international actors had become more united in their denunciation of the poor record of human rights violations, endemic corruption and impunity of the Moi government. Internationally supported domestic election monitoring efforts played an important role in this. A few years later, more than 14 opposition

4 Agenda 4 of the National Accord comprises a number of principles and commitments by the PNU and ODM on long-term issues that are seen as crucial in achieving sustainable peace, stability and security in Kenya. These include principles on 1) constitutional, institutional and legal reform; 2) land reform; 3) poverty, inequity and regional imbalances; 4) unemployment, particularly among the youth; 5) consolidation of national unity and cohesion; and 6) transparency, accountability and impunity. `Statement of Principles on Long-Term Issues and Solutions', available at: . docs/S_of_P_with_Matrix.pdf

Kenya Jeroen de Zeeuw

parties, as well as leaders from different ethno-regional communities and various prominent civil society representatives, came together in the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). In Kenya's first truly democratic elections in 2002, NARC secured a comfortable parliamentary majority and its popular presidential candidate Mwai Kibaki easily defeated KANU's Uhuru Kenyatta.

Whipped up by a euphoric feeling of `arrival' and the announcement of a series of headline-grabbing reforms, both Kenyan civil society organisations and international agencies stepped up engagement with the new government. The Kibaki administration introduced free universal primary education, dismissed almost half of Kenya's senior judges, established several new commissions to look into major corruption scandals (including those involving Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing) and nominated the respected local Transparency International director John Githongo as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics; all this was widely seen as proof of the new political will to reform. However, many of the reforms were quickly brought to a halt by the old guard of Kikuyu politicians and senior civil servants, backed by the Kikuyu professional and business class, who were contemptuous of donor efforts on the one hand and reformists on the other. As a result, few high-level politicians suspected of corruption were prosecuted. Matters grew worse when it became clear that State House was increasingly dominated by Kikuyu ? Kibaki's ethnic group ? together with allied ethnicities. Infighting over the distribution of power within the coalition put pressure on the already fragile NARC. A new draft constitution prepared by Kibaki supporters did little to reduce the powers of the president and proposed only a weak prime ministerial position. The draft constitution was rejected in a referendum in November 2005.

When the NARC finally collapsed in 2006, and a new opposition in the form of the ODM united itself behind the `No' voters of the constitutional referendum, Kibaki was forced to restore ties with KANU and other former political adversaries to prepare for the 2007 elections. The subsequent electoral campaign was marked by violence and verbal abuse, with supporters of Raila Odinga's ODM on the one side and Kibaki's PNU on the other. Although the parliamentary elections were won by the ODM by a wide margin, many smaller parties were allied with the PNU and the outcome of the presidential elections proved less certain. When the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), amid its own publicly expressed doubts about the validity of the voting numbers, declared Kibaki the winner of the elections, tensions over alleged electoral irregularities soon escalated into violence.

Overview of donor activities

The international donor community is still grappling with the political and societal fall-out of the 2008 post-election crisis after almost two years. At the political strategic level, attention is focused mainly on the prosecution of those held responsible for the post-election violence as well as the implementation of Agenda 4 of the national power-sharing accord. At the programmatic and technical level, a shift is underway from government-oriented funding to that which targets civil society. The hope of many Kenyan civil society organisations is that after five years spent strengthening the supply side (i.e. the government) the pendulum will now swing back and donors will increasingly strengthen the demand side (i.e. civil society).

As a result of its strategic location, transport facilities and relative stability, Kenya has long been the East African hub of a large number of international development and emergency aid organisations. After New York and Geneva, the United Nations (UN) Office in Nairobi's Gigiri district, for example, is the largest UN regional centre in the world. Between independence and 2004, Kenya received an estimated USD 18.4 billion in official development assistance (ODA) from a variety of international agencies.5 Over the five-year period 2002?07 it received more than USD 4.1 billion in aid. Though these are huge sums of money, international aid in Kenya accounts for only 5?7 per cent of the national budget, in contrast to other countries in East and Central Africa.

In an attempt to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the majority of this assistance is spent

5 Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark, `Kenya ? Denmark Partnership: Strategy for Development Cooperation, 2006?2010', p.17.f

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May 2010

in sectors such as health (including HIV/AIDS), infrastructure, education and agriculture. Less than 10 per cent (roughly USD 408 million) of aid focuses on democracy and governance activities. According to the latest figures for 2007, bilateral donors contributed 84 per cent of ODA to Kenya, while multilateral donors provided 16 per cent. In the same year the US was the largest donor, followed by the European Commission (EC), the UK and Japan.6

International agencies active in Kenya can be divided roughly into four major groups: multilateral agencies; bilateral agencies; non-governmental organisations (NGOs); and private and political party-affiliated foundations. Each of these has its own modus operandi, types of programmes and modalities of assistance. It is important to mention here that most of the international agencies are active in a broad range of assistance areas, including healthcare, education, infrastructure and the environment, with the latter increasingly under threat in Kenya. However, this paper limits itself to democracy and governance assistance. In line with the Kenya Joint Assistance Strategy (KJAS), democracy and governance assistance is divided into several sectors, including human rights and administration of justice, legislative strengthening, anti-corruption, electoral processes, local governance, civic education and gender. Activities related to youth, reconciliation, and conflict prevention and mitigation are also included, as they have been especially relevant since the 2008 post-election crisis. The following section gives an overview of some of the most prominent actors in these areas.

Multilateral actors

The first group of democracy and governance assistance actors in Kenya comprises multilateral agencies, particularly the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Delegation of the EC. The World Bank is also active in the area of public sector governance but is not included here.7

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): UNDP has been represented in Kenya since 1964. With more than a dozen senior project staff working on governance-related programmes, it is one of the largest organisations in this field. Under its Empowerment Component, UNDP supports a large number of governance programmes, focusing on public service reform, civil society capacity-building, and electoral assistance.8 When drawing funds from its Target for Resource Assignments from the Core (TRAC) as well as the various thematic trust funds managed by its headquarters in New York, UNDP's role is not unlike that of other donor agencies, despite the fact that most of these funds rely on contributions from individual member states. The USD 46,000 Women's Advocacy Project, for example, is funded by UNDP, implemented by the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA) and supports the social empowerment of women by building capacity in government and NGOs for the mainstreaming of gender issues. In addition, UNDP acts as an intermediary that manages the financial contributions from various donor agencies. This task is often carried out by specialised project management units (PMUs), as was the case with the 2007 Elections Assistance Programme. Established to strengthen the capacity of the Election Commission of Kenya (ECK), civil society and other agencies, as well as to improve citizen participation, this programme is an example of `basket funding' from nine different donors, and brought together more than USD 13 million. Another case in point is the USD 10 million Amkeni Wakenya - Civil Society Democratic Governance Facility (CSDGF), supported by Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.

6 Amounts calculated from the Aggregate Aid Statistics of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), available at: . Owing to different donor definitions of democracy and governance assistance and variations in the way in which assistance activities are classified under the OECD's creditor reporting system (CRS), these amounts are indicative only. CRS codes used for democracy and governance assistance include 151.I.5a Government & Civil Society General (EUR 336 million), 920X Support to NGOs (EUR 66.9 million) and 152.I.5.b Conflict, Peace and Security (EUR 4.4 million).p.17.f 7 Important World Bank projects in the area of public sector governance are the USD 25 million Institutional Reform and Capacity Building Technical Assistance Project (aimed at strengthening public financial management systems) and the USD 18 million Financial and Legal Sector Technical Assistance Project (focusing on creating a sound financial system and strengthened legal and judicial capacity). However, according to the World Bank website, "the largest share of commitments is in infrastructure (USD 770 million) including transport (USD 460 million), energy (USD 160 million) and water and sanitation (USD150 million); followed by agriculture and rural development (USD 360 million)". See 8 Other UNDP-funded and/or coordinated programmes include the Public Service Reform and Development Secretariat in Kenya (PSR&DS; USD 672,501), the Kenya Youth Empowerment Project (USD 132,293), People-Centred Governance ? Assisting Communities Together (ACT;USD 74,548), Human Rights Strengthening for Indigenous Communities (HURIST; USD 107,430), Constitutional Review in Kenya (USD 12,884), and Africa Governance Forum?Media's Role in APRM (USD 198,905). Information obtained from .

Kenya Jeroen de Zeeuw

European Commission (EC): The Delegation of the European Commission serves as the official political and aid-coordinating body of the European Union (EU) in Kenya. Its office opened in 1976 following the signing of the first Lom? Convention. EC governance-related programmes are mainly financed through contributions from the multi-annual European Development Fund (EDF), which in Kenya has primarily focused on agriculture and rural development, roads and transport and macro-economic support. Despite the fact that governance was recognised as `a priority for all' under the Cotonou Agreement, democratic governance support is considered a `non-focal sector' in the EC's country strategy paper for Kenya, representing less than 3?5 per cent of total EC assistance and managed by only two governance experts. Nevertheless, civil society grants provided by the EC are generally much larger than those provided by UNDP, with a typical grant amounting to EUR 100,000?400,000 for two to three years. Under the 8th EDF (1995?2000), the EC funded the EUR 6.6 million Democratic Governance Support Programme (DGSP), which from 2003? 2006 supported 31 NGOs on issues including empowerment of local communities, community monitoring of grassroots development projects, lobbying and advocacy and human rights defence.9

Under the 9th European Development Fund (2003?07), EC governance support included EUR 6 million for the Non-State Actors programme (NSA-NET) of which EUR 500,000 was committed to support the activities of the Kenyan Elections Domestic Observers Forum (KEDOF). Of the total EUR 383 million available under the 10th EDF (2008?13), EC governance assistance will increase to EUR 9.2 million, focusing on activities related to democratic governance including anti-corruption, access to justice, elections and civic education, local governance and policy and legal reform; promotion and protection of human rights; public sector reform; and institution and capacity-building. At least EUR 4.6 million will be allocated to non-state actors and there will be flexible funding to support activities related to the National Dialogue and Reconciliation (NDR) process. Separate civil society funding is also available under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) as well as from the `Non State Actors-Local Authorities in Development' budget. The EC is also an active supporter of the multi-donor Governance, Justice Law and Order (GJLOS) programme (see below). Finally, it is important to note that the EC is the only development partner that gives general budget support to the Kenyan government. Out of the EUR 125 million allocated for that purpose between 2003 and 2007, only the first two tranches (EUR 50 million and 40.6 million respectively) have been disbursed. The final tranche is still pending. Over the period 2008?2013, a total of EUR 127 million has been allocated for general budget support. The EC has recently carried out a mid-term review of its Kenya Country Strategy Paper and budget allocations under the 10th EDF, which `might lead to adjustments benefitting the governance sector's supply side.'

Bilateral actors

The second major group of donors consists of the various bilateral aid agencies and diplomatic missions. The most active in the field of democracy and governance are the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway and Finland. A considerable part of bilateral assistance to Kenya is put into large `baskets' often coordinated by UNDP or specialised financial management agencies, such as KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. In response to the 2008 post-election crisis, all bilateral donors are currently reviewing their aid programmes. Many of them claim to be bringing their programming more in line with Agenda 4 of the National Accord, aimed at the implementation of constitutional, legal and institutional reforms related to land, poverty and inequality, youth unemployment and social cohesion, as well as transparency, accountability and impunity.10 The following paragraphs give an overview of all the main bilateral donors and their governance programmes, to the extent that information was available.

United States: With an overall aid budget of more than USD 666 million in 2008, the US is by far the largest bilateral donor in Kenya. The vast majority of this budget, however, is taken up by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) consisting of USD 500 million channelled through the State Department. In addition, the US provides support for military education, training and security sector reform (USD 1.2 million)

9 Republic of Kenya and European Community, `Country Strategy Paper and Indicative Programme for the Period 2008?2013'. See also http:// delken.ec.europa.eu/. 10 `Acting Together for Kenya. Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government: Statement of Principles on Long-Term Issues and Solutions', Agenda Item 4 (also referred to as `the National Accord'). Available at .

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