Kenya's diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court got a major boost after the African Union agreed to back its bid to defer Hague trials against six of its citizens. AU chief Jean Ping told reporters that the summit had approved Kenya's request for a suspension of the trials for one year as it seeks to overhaul its judicial system and try the suspects at home. Kenya had appealed for a suspension of the ICC process against prominent Kenyans which the court has accused of sponsoring the violence that saw 1,133 killed and close to 600,000 flee from their homes.

Abortion remains a thorny issue in Kenya today. It was one of the divisive topics that generated emotive debates during the discourse preceding the referendum to enact the new constitution. The issue of right to life and when a pregnancy should be terminated took centre stage to the point that it was tearing this country apart. However, whether it is ethical or not; moral or not, abortion remains an issue that cannot be swept under the carpet. Many women in their 40s and 50s and teenage girls who get unwanted or unplanned pregnancies die every day as they procure unsafe abortions.

The is alarmed by the increasing spate of violence involving uniformed officers and civilians. Recent shocking actions involving assault of police officers by civilians and extra-judicial killings by the police are particularly concerning.

‘Like most Kenyans, the chilling sight of plainclothes policemen gunning down three unarmed “gangsters” at close range and in cold blood… left my stomach turning,’ writes H. Nanjala Nyabola. ‘Is this how low we’ve sunk as a nation?'

Prime Minister Raila Odinga has disowned the shuttle diplomacy spearheaded by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka to seek the support of African Union to defer Kenya’s case at the International Criminal Court. Mr Odinga, at a news conference in Nairobi, said what Cabinet had agreed on was the referral of the cases involving the masterminds of the post-election violence suspects to the International Criminal Court and not to defer them.

With the government moving to protect suspects from the International Criminal Court (ICC), Gado wonders what would happen if Jesus were to be tried in Kenya today.

Kenya has secured the support of the African Union Commission and Ethiopia in its bid to have the International Criminal Court defer the case against six Kenyans at the International Criminal Court and have them tried locally. AU Commission chair Jean Ping endorsed Kenya’s request, saying it is within the realm of the rights of all ICC member states. Kenya’s Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka has been on a tour of African states that the government wants to back the country’s request.

The extrajudicial killings that were carried out along Lang'ata Road by the Kenya Police indicates to all Kenyans that the death squads are now completely out of control. It is now clear to all that the Kenya Police have abandoned all pretext of any reform and are now operating totally outside the law.

Judges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague have rejected William Ruto’s application criticising its chief prosecutor's investigations and seeking to bar summons or arrest warrants over Kenya poll violence. Mr Ruto had filed an application at the court arguing that chief prosecutor Louis Moreno-Ocampo failed to conduct proper investigations on the Kenya case and instead relied on reports by the Waki Commission and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).

Policemen were on Wednesday caught on camera executing three men in cold blood on a busy Nairobi street, reports the Daily Nation. A motorist who happened upon the confrontation between plainclothes policemen and alleged criminals in the morning traffic pulled out his camera and took photographs. All the three men had already surrendered and were lying on the tarmac on Langata Road near Wilson Airport. As they lay on the tarmac, a policeman in plain clothes was pointing a gun to their heads.

A significant decline in agriculture, still considered by many to be the economy’s backbone, has seen the emergence of information communication technologies (ICT) and telecommunications as the new pillars of the economy. 'We have been getting requests to increase allocations to the agricultural sector. The ICT sector, including the numerous outsourcing ventures which employ mostly the youth, appears more attractive,' Joseph Kinyua, treasury permanent secretary told Financial Journal.

As slain land rights activist Moses Mpoe was laid to rest on 11 December, thousands of community members gathered to mourn and remember him, reports The Press Institute. During the funeral, murmurs circulated suggesting that senior government officials and their families were responsible for Mpoe’s assassination, as Mpoe played a major role in a court case that aimed to return more than 30,000 acres of land in the area known as Mau Narok to the Maasai community, a semi-nomadic people indigenous to East Africa who are known for their distinctive dress and customs.

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) decides whether to charge six prominent Kenyans over the violence that followed the 2007 presidential election, internally displaced persons (IDPs) have expressed concern over their much-delayed resettlement. 'We feel we have been suffering in camps for too long; we wonder if those who caused us the displacement ever think of our welfare,' Peter Kariuki, an IDP at the Mawingo camp in Nyandarwa district, Central Province, told IRIN.

Several Cabinet Minister have left Kenya on a mission to countries around Africa to lobby support ahead of the tabling of a Motion before the African Union (AU), to push for Kenya's withdrawal from the International Criminal Court statute. The AU meeting will take place between 30 and 31 January in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Union has already urged for a deferment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's indictment by the ICC and could undoubtedly back Kenya's bid.

After mapping various key locations and landmarks in the country, Google is now mapping Korogocho, one of Nairobi's informal settlements. The mapping of Korogocho, an area with about 200,000 people, is meant to make it easier to identify streets, key structures and landmarks that were previously not mapped onto Google Maps. The mapping is done through Google Map Maker, a tool that allows people to help create a map by adding or editing features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools.

Kenya Anticorruption Commission (KACC) is currently investigating another minister over graft, in addition to the four ministers earlier mentioned, reports the Daily Nation. According to KACC director Dr PLO Lumumba, the latest case relates to allegations of misuse of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) money.

'People living with disability face all sorts of discrimination. We are discriminated against at job interviews in schools. Every day is a battle to remain positive in the face of a world that is too bent on dismissing those among us that do not meet the standard of what is normal,' explains Mishi Juma, a disabled community leader from the Coast region. In the past, Juma never had a safe space to raise these issues. But all this has now changed. Juma and many other disabled women can now raise their concerns with the newly established Ministry of gender and social development.

The January 2011 edition of Gay Kenya has articles on being gay and being safe, a Kenyan activist who has been granted asylum in the US and the do's and don't's of gay dating sites.

When darkness descends in the ubiquitous slums and ‘informal settlements’ surrounding Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, women who visit and use communal toilets unwittingly become sitting ducks. The dangers are high, for women living in the slums, that they may become targets of youth gangs and individual male rapists. 'I had heard that it was unsafe to visit the (community) toilet alone,' said forty-two year old, Rebecca Nduku, a single mother of three, when she challenged her friend’s ‘I-told-you-so’ warning. Acting against advice, Rebecca suffered irrevocably for throwing caution to the wind.

Medical experts have warned that malaria and HIV have monopolised interventions geared towards curbing child mortality in Kenya, thus ignoring the equally deadly killer, diarrhoea. This disease has silently claimed the lives of hundreds of children every year. Cecilia Njambi, a mother of two, lost her first-born son to diarrhoea. 'He hadn’t slept well the previous night and had complained that his tummy hurt. His stool was loose but we weren’t alarmed as no one takes diarrhoea seriously anyway. We just assumed that he must have eaten something that didn’t go down well with him.'