Thousands of farmers in Western Kenya are attracting global attention after being the first group in Africa to win financing from the World Bank (WB) to use agriculture to fight climate change. The farmers, spread in 45,000 hectares of land in Bungoma, Malakisi, Bondo, and Kisumu, will receive Sh28 million (US$350,000) from WB's BioCarbon Fund to adopt environmentally-friendly agricultural practices that cut carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

As Kenyans take to the streets in protest against the high cost of living, Okoth Osewe lays the blame for the food crisis on the government’s ‘liberalised’ economic policy.

I hope Kenya people could , and everything will come down, I can see there still some problems unsolved since the elections in 2008, but I hope reason will prevail in the solution of your most crucial issues.

My solidarity to the people of Kenya gets to you all.

On 8 May, Kenyan police officers illegally cancelled a rally to campaign for economic and social rights in Starehe constituency. This could 'set a bad precedence for future engagements between peaceful citizens and law enforcement officers; in as far as exercising of democratic rights is concerned,' write campaign coordinators the Unga Revolution, in an open letter to the Commissioner of Police.

Documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans directed by the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret', a report says. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said the papers should now be made public. The internal review found some Foreign Office officials had chosen to ignore the documents' existence. It comes as the High Court is due to rule on a compensation case brought by four Kenyans over alleged human rights abuses in the 1950s and 1960s.

In what is possibly ‘the first session of its kind in Kenya’s election history’, Bunge La Mwananchi (People’s Parliament) brought together aspiring candidates for Kamukunji constituency at a forum where people could question their would-be MPs. The '[t]ime for lethargic service for Political Leaders and Public Officers is up,’ writes Odhiambo Okecth. (Coverage of the debate is available from

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of child labour in the world and estimates show that it continues to grow. This paper examines the causes and magnitude of child labour in Kenya. It finds that socioeconomic status and structure of the household have a strong effect on child labour. Also, a large proportion of working children attend school.

Facilities in refugee camps in northeastern Kenya have been stretched to the limit, aid workers say, as more and more Somali refugees flee the conflict at home. 'Dadaab refugee camps continue to receive a significant number of new arrivals who are often very tired and exhausted, having travelled very far, sometimes from as far as [the Somali capital] Mogadishu, in some cases on foot [over 1,000km],' said Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in Kenya. As of 15 May, Nyabera said, Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee complex, was home to at least 348,605 people.

Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due to the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, exacerbated by the lack of a legal framework for the commercialisation of these controversial products. The Syngenta Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation attached to the Syngenta Company that researches and produces GM seeds. The foundation is involved in the 'Safe Biotechnology Management' (SABIMA) project aimed at promoting GM technology among small-scale farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

The rot in public hospitals in the country has been exposed in new reports by the anti-graft agency. Two studies conducted by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) between 16 October and 20 December 2009, found that provincial general and district hospitals are on the sick bed, plagued by staff shortages, corruption and poor facilities. Cartels, in collaboration with management, have taken over the supply chain as overworked and demoralised staff merely watch, according to the reports. The majority of Kenyans, unable to afford health services, mainly go to these health institutions.

The government says it is investigating the Ocampo Six, reports Kenya's The Daily Nation. It has dismissed claims by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and post-election violence victims that police and judicial reforms in the country could hinder it from trying the six locally. While defending its admissibility case at the ICC, the government said the elements necessary for success of its complementarity challenge to the court’s admissibility are in place, providing it with the right to investigate and prosecute.

A Kenyan official says a British human rights investigator looking into the illegal deportations and detentions of terror suspects from Kenya to Uganda has herself been deported. Hassan Omar Hassan of the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says lawyer Clara Gutteridge was deported on government orders.

The Kenyan government and rights groups have expressed outrage at a project in western Kenya that is paying HIV-positive women to undergo long-term contraception. Project Prevention, a US-based NGO, offers cash to drug addicts in the US and the UK to undergo long-term contraception or permanent sterilisation. In 2010, the project started offering HIV-positive women in western Kenya US$40 to be fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs), which can prevent pregnancy for over a decade. The project uses a medical practitioner in the western Kenyan town of Kakamega to insert the IUDs for $7 per woman; so far, 22 women have undergone the procedure.

Highly sensitive documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans at the hands of the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret' for the UK Government, a report has found. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the documents, which detail how detainees were castrated, beaten and sexually abused while in British camps, should now be made public. His announcement comes as a High Court judge is set to decide whether the UK Government, which sanctioned 'systematic violence' in the detention camps, is liable for the torture of the Mau Mau people between 1952 and 1961.

This special issue of Pambazuka News, published in association with AwaaZ, chronicles ‘justice’ as its main theme. This is particularly in the context of the enactment of the new constitution and by extension to seek justice for the people of Kenya. The issue covers a range of articles related to the struggle for justice in the overall context today: In the judiciary, in the courts of the people under public litigation cases and the eviction of the poor from their homes; in the environment – in this case Lamu; for sexual minorities – in this case the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) movement in Kenya today; the relationship between the Kenyan Somali and the Kenyan state; the rights of women; and in the press. We have also examined the constitutional community justice systems in Kenya in comparison to the formal legal systems today.

In addition there is an article on the historical perspective on the Politics of Law in Kenya. We have also chronicled the life of the late Chief Justice of Kenya Hon, Mr Justice C B Madan. We hope that this story will have an impact on the current process of appointing a new Chief Justice in Kenya under the new constitution. The late Justice Madan was a ‘Champion for the supremacy of the rule of Law’, which we so badly lack today in Kenya.

‘Before I became a Human Rights Defender, I had to safe guard my living space in a closet. I knew I was safe – nothing could or would harm me – I felt untouchable. I had a place to call home, and I held on to it never jeopardizing the privileges. But all that changed when my family learnt about my sexual identity,’ writes Gullit Makobe.

While the theme of justice is central to Kenya’s constitution, writes Yash Pal Ghai, it cannot in and of itself guarantee its own effectiveness.

Kenya has for many years been running two legal systems in parallel, the common law and community justice systems. With the country in need of ‘common guidelines’ around the administration of community justice, Jedidah Wakonyo Waruhiu, Florence Gachichio and Ezra Rotich discuss the challenges facing the system.

While the Kenyan courts have some way to go before they achieve the sort of impact that the Indian courts have had, the country’s new constitution should work towards making the courts of Kenya the courts for Kenyans, writes Jill Cottrell Ghai.

Kenya’s media regularly reveals itself to be inconsistent in its reporting of issues of justice, writes Tom Maliti.