Kenyan politicians have been accused of plundering state coffers after awarding themselves a monthly pay rise of nearly 25%, making them some of the best-paid legislators in the world. After resisting calls to pay income tax for years, MPs finally agreed to pay the tax, but only after giving themselves a sweetener of 240,000 shillings (£1,960) taking their monthly pay to 1,091,000 shillings (£8,920).

The agency tasked with implementing the Anti-Counterfeit Act of 2008 in Kenya is unaware of the Constitutional Court’s suspension of the law’s application to medicines. Moreover, a large multinational pharmaceutical company has offered to assist the agency in implementing the law with regards to medicines despite the court decision.

Kenya has announced plans to establish a regional carbon emissions trading scheme to steer Africa's carbon market. This would hopefully position the country as the continent's carbon credit trade hub, finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta said in his budget speech to parliament earlier this month (10 June).

A court to mainly try suspected pirates has opened in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, funded by international donors. Pirates based in neighbouring Somalia have made the Gulf of Aden one of the world's most dangerous shipping lanes.

A court in Kenya has ruled that prisoners will be allowed to vote in a referendum on a new constitution. It is the first time that prisoners in the East Africa nation have been given the right to vote. The ruling applies only to voting in August's referendum, but correspondents say it may lead to further concessions for future elections.

When Samuel Mwangi’s one-year-old HIV-positive son died five years ago, he thought the death of his child also meant the death of his family’s legacy. "I wept. And to the bottom of my heart, I knew that that was the end of my generation," said HIV-positive Mwangi. The baby’s death had been a big blow to Mwangi and his partner, Miriam Wanjiru, because their child had been on an ARV treatment program at a health centre. They had hoped he would survive.

The government of Kenya is running an ambitious programme that aims to have 80 percent of all uncircumcised men - an estimated 1.1 million - circumcised by 2013. Most uncircumcised men live in the western province of Nyanza, where so far more than 100,000 have had the procedure, and the drive is seen as hugely successful. IRIN/PlusNews visited Nyanza's capital city, Kisumu, and spoke to several men about why they refused to be circumcised.

Kenya's long-awaited biosafety law is likely to become operational this month — well over a year after its president approved the legislation. President Mwai Kibaki signed off parliament's approval of the biosafety legislation in February 2009, after a decade of controversy about the advisability of allowing the commercialisation of genetically modified organisms.

Kenya is positioning itself to reap minimum benefits from the expanded market set to be created by the integration of the East African Community (EAC) Common Market which comes into effect on July 1. Both the government and the private sector have lined a series of meetings to ensure the East African nation’s biggest economy makes economic grains from the regional market.

Shot at and raped. Arrested and beaten. Detained and deported. Extorted and robbed. Threatened and insulted. Ignored and shunned. The treatment of hardened criminals in some far-flung police state? The fate of political opponents by a repressive regime? Not quite. For Somali refugees - 80% of them women and children - this is their welcome to Kenya.

Kenyan Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta presented the national budget for the 2010-2011 financial year to parliament on 10 June. The budget sees a near doubling of past allocations for HIV treatment, earmarking Ksh. 900 million (US$ 11.25 million) for antiretroviral treatment. Earlier this year UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé jointly launched the country’s National AIDS Strategic Plan (2010- 2013) with the Prime Minister, Right Honorable Raila Odinga.

Kenya’s High Court may have awarded Wachira Weheire compensation for his unlawful detention and torture, but it did not set any meaningful judicial precedent with the case, writes Tennille Duffy. In its ruling, the court neither denounced ‘the outcome of torture as well as the practice’ nor brought ‘home the point to those in power today that violation of constitutional rights by the state is not acceptable and will always be severely penalised by the courts.’ Not only has the court failed Mr Weheire, argues Duffy, it has failed all those who continue to suffer unlawful detention and torture at the hands of the state.

Members of the ‘Yes’ camp in the run-up to Kenya’s constitution referendum continue to reject the legitimacy of a recent ruling by the Constitutional and Judicial Review Division of the High Court of Kenya that deemed the inclusion of Kadhi’s courts in the country’s draft constitution ‘discriminatory’, writes Dana Wagner. Wagner investigates how the inclusion of Kadhi’s courts in Kenya’s constitution has become a contentious issue in the country, and how this issue has given constitution debates a sharp religious edge.

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Hanging from a rafter in Jane Wanjiku’s home is a calendar bearing the image of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. It's an illustration of how the ICC has seized the imagination of ill-treated people around the world. Wanjiku has lived in Kibera for more than 60 years and witnessed many upheavals. But the 74-year-old says she has never seen violence as severe as what followed the 2007 elections.

The United Nations human rights chief has urged the Kenyan Government to reconsider setting up a special tribunal to pursue accountability for the crimes committed during the violence that followed the disputed December 2007 elections. “I have been assured that this option is still open,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement issued at the end of a three-day visit to Kenya.

In early 2008, an estimated 650,000 Kenyans were displaced and a further 1,300 lost their lives during two months of intense communal violence after the announcement of presidential and parliamentary election results. The incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, leader of the Party of National Unity (PNU), was declared to have defeated Raila Odinga, head of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in the presidential contest, despite the fact the PNU won fewer parliamentary seats. Both local and international observers questioned the results.

Gado's cartoons this week feature an alternative example of security checks during US Vice-President Joe Biden's trip to Kenya, Barack Obama being called by Nairobi about his support for Kenya's new constitution, the 2010 East African budget, and China & North Korea vs the US & Israel over nuclear weapons.

Religious fundamentalism in Kenya has played a central role in the orchestration of gross human rights abuses against transsexuals and other minorities, writes Audrey Mbugua. Urging people to change their mentality, Mbugua argues that ‘we need to respect the human rights of others whether we – or our holy books – agree with how they live their lives or not. At the end of the day, the important question is whether the other person’s acts cause harm to others or not.’

How can donors contribute to governance reform in Kenya? What role can they play in strengthening state-society relations in particular? This report, published by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), makes recommendations for Norway’s strategic approach to governance in Kenya based on a political economy analysis of the country. More focus on state-society relations is needed, particularly at local government level. For example, donors could support CSOs that represent the interests of local groups. Systematic learning, analysis and social dialogue should also be emphasised.