Health workers spread information on the prevention of COVID-19 in Kenya. Credit: Victoria Nthenge.

Kenya’s response to the global pandemic has so far been marked by two phases. The first was a rapid but coercive and badly thought-out lockdown that was challenged in court for infringing civil and political liberties.

The second has been the much slower move to procure and distribute vaccines. This current phase also has human rights implications. Both Kenya’s constitution and international law require the state to take effective and prompt steps to protect and promote health. In relation to COVID-19, this includes ensuring vaccines are available, accessible without geographic or economic barriers, culturally acceptable within reason, and of sufficient quality.

This may be an uphill challenge. According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Vaccine Introduction Readiness Assessment Tool, African countries overall record an average score of 33% preparedness for COVID-19 vaccine roll-out against a recommended rate of 80%.

How is Kenya faring, in terms of procurement (“availability”), distribution (“accessibility”) and uptake (“acceptability”)?

Procurement

Kenya requires 30 million doses to vaccinate 60% of its population, as recommended by the global public-private health partnership GAVI. Efforts at procurement, however, have been hindered, first by the Cabinet Secretary for Health’s doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines, and then by the delay in establishing a national taskforce for vaccine deployment until December 2020.

Nonetheless, some progress has been made. Kenya is due to get 24 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine through the joint WHO-GAVI COVAX facility, and a further 12 million through bilateral engagements. It also stands to receive 10.8 million of the 270 million doses the African Union (AU) acquired through its African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), though this will be slowed by the need for WHO approval. (A further 400 million doses has been received by the AU but the structure for allocating them between countries has not yet been determined.)

COVAX has promised to deliver the first 4 million doses by the end of February, but beyond that, Kenya has no clear timelines for the delivery of its vaccines. It was set to start receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines this month, but that plan has been thrown into disarray after the EU banned the export of vaccines produced within its member states.

The situation of scarcity is worsened by the fact that the UK pre-signed contracts that prohibited exports until its domestic needs are met. This vaccine nationalism has given no regard to Kenya’s role in hosting trials of the vaccine. India has similarly blocked exports from its Serum Institute until at least 100 million doses are available for domestic use.

These challenges in accessing the procured Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccines cannot be made up by the Pfizer/BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines as they require storage at -70 degrees Celsius which is not feasible on a mass scale in Kenya.

Distribution

Planning for distribution has been marked by similar delays. It was only on 29 January that Kenya’s Ministry of Health outlined the three phases of its vaccine roll-out. Phase one (February to June 2021) will target 1.25 million health workers, security and immigration officials. Phase two (July 2021 to June 2022) will cover 9.7 million over-50s and over-18s with underlying health conditions. Phase three, run concurrently with phase two, will target 4.9 million vulnerable people such as those in informal settlements.

This broadly reflects WHO guidelines which prioritise groups most at risk. What it neglects are the realities of caring for vulnerable people, which is often done within families and by unpaid women.

The Kenya-Gavi Technical Assistance Plan for 2021 sets out goals for several aspects of the vaccine delivery, but it remains aspirational. Experts warn in particular that failure to prepare for the vaccines’ transport to more remote counties as well as poor storage and administration could undermine preparation efforts.

Inadequacy of personnel and training is also likely to pose a challenge. At the onset of the pandemic,  Kenya’s response was led by “Ebola Champions”: 155 medical practitioners sent to West Africa during the 2016 outbreak there. While this cadre, along with those experienced in the administration of other vaccines, will be invaluable, there has been no specific training in administering the COVID-19 vaccine to date. These shortcomings are compounded by an ongoing strike of healthcare workers in some counties. The unequal distribution of healthcare facilities in the country may also undermine distribution efforts in marginalised areas.

Uptake

These challenges may be compounded by the inability or unwillingness of certain population groups to attend vaccination centres. Poor terrain for travel, a suspicion of state-backed interventions, and the nomadic practices of some rural communities has inhibited the uptake of other vaccines and may do so again. Pastoralists’ movement across international borders may lead them to miss out, while people in areas with high poverty levels may feel they cannot prioritise accessing the vaccine.

Vaccine scepticism is also evident, as it is around the world. In Kenya, faith groups like Kavonokoya and Wakorino have long rejected modern medicine either on grounds of their religious beliefs and their preference for traditional medicine. These communities have resisted strategies such as wearing masks and are likely to refuse the COVID-19 vaccination as they have done with the polio vaccine.

Kenya in the international context

Kenya is not yet ready to deliver vaccines in sufficient quantity to those most at risk or to the population as a whole. While important steps have been taken, earlier government inaction, enduring structural discrimination, and widespread distrust of the state present major challenges.

At the same time, Kenya’s fate has been crucially shaped by the decisions of states and corporate actors in the Global North. The UK, EU and US have all engaged in competitive national procurement strategies with little regard for the needs of vulnerable populations in the Global South. This is not simply a question of realpolitik, tempered by occasional charity in the interests of soft-power and diplomacy. It violates the legal obligation on states to allow each other to realise the right to health in their own territories, as the UN committee has recently emphasised.

Put simply, buying up available supplies and barring their export, as well as enforcing applicable patents in a time of global emergency, amount to vaccine imperialism, inconsistent with a just international order based on human rights.

This article draws from COVID-19 in Kenya: Global Health, Human Rights and the State in a time of Pandemic, a collaborative project involving Cardiff Law and Global Justice, the African Population and Health Research Centre, and the Katiba Institute, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).

Margaret Ruto, a Pennsylvania nurse in her mid-30s, thought she was returning to the rolling green hills of Kenya's tea-growing region to care for her dying mother-in-law.

Instead, a fluke of fate awaited her: A man who lived just 10 minutes from her home in the United States had opened an orphanage not 10 minutes from her ancestral village in Kenya - and children were saying they had been sexually abused there.

It was the summer of 2018, and she found the village in uproar. Two girls, 12 and 14, had recently escaped and shared horror stories of sexual abuse at the hands of the orphanage's director, Gregory Dow. 

Ruto was led to a rumpled patch of earth behind the orphanage. Former employees said a 9-month-old boy buried there had died a few years earlier after choking on something while he'd been left unsupervised.

Standing over the grave, she felt dizzy. It was a moment that would divide her life into a before and an after: a transformation from an "ordinary woman" into a detective.

Dow, whom she would spend the next year chasing, had already fled back to Pennsylvania after members of the community confronted him and alerted authorities. Kenyan police say they missed catching him at the airport by just a few hours.

Locals told Ruto they feared that this entitled, White foreigner claiming to be a devout Christian was going to evade justice.

"I was meant to know about this," she remembered thinking. "And I was meant to do something about it."

Turmoil lay ahead that Ruto, a dual US-Kenyan citizen, could scarcely have imagined: sleuthing on two continents, constantly looking over her shoulder, working through the trauma of child sex abuse survivors, and sobbing uncontrollably in her car, all while compiling a shocking investigation that would eventually make it into the hands of FBI agents, splash across the front pages of every Kenyan newspaper and dramatically alter Kenya's child services policies.

The only hint of her involvement until now has been an official acknowledgment that the FBI was "acting on a tip."

After agreeing to a plea deal, Gregory Dow, now 61, was sentenced Thursday in a U.S. federal court to 188 months in prison on four counts of "engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places." Dow will be nearly 80 years old if he makes it to the end of his sentence.

Dow's plea deal acknowledges guilt on all charges brought against him. His attorneys did not make Dow available to respond to the allegations of deaths at the orphanage, saying only that he had never publicly addressed those claims. A special clause in the US penal code allows for prosecution of child abuse cases committed by Americans overseas.

During the sentencing hearing Thursday, Dow apologized "for the pain that I've caused." Judge Edward G. Smith called him "a missionary from hell."

Ruto is coming forward with her story because she - and the FBI and the US attorney's office that prosecuted Dow - hope it will inspire similar sleuthing instincts in others.

"Ultimately, Ms. Ruto's information found its way to a team of dedicated FBI agents, who . . . gathered the evidence required to charge Dow and hold him accountable for the monstrous abuse he perpetrated on his victims," William M. McSwain, the US attorney at the time in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement to The Washington Post. "This case is a textbook example of the ways in which the public can assist law enforcement in bringing sexual predators like Dow, and other criminals, to justice."

Separately, Kenyan police exhumed and autopsied the body of the 9-month-old, James Kipkirui, as part of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of his death, according to Johansen Oduor, the government's chief forensic pathologist.

Three summers ago, Ruto made a silent, solemn promise that nothing would stop her - not corrupt authorities in Kenya and not sticky-slow bureaucracy in the United States - from pursuing justice for the children at the orphanage.

"I'm just an ordinary woman, a nurse, a mother," she recalled recently. "I had no idea what I was getting into."

Kenya has a vast array of missionary-run institutions, including nursing homes, schools and orphanages. Often, impoverished families avoid extra financial burden by sending their children and elderly to live at these charitable institutions.

When the Dow Family Children's Home opened in 2008, foreigners were not required to submit to background checks. It is possible that no one in Kenya was aware Dow had been a registered sex offender in the United States until 2006.

Dow's case was the latest abuse scandal linked to White missionaries in Kenya. In 2016, for instance, a 21-year-old Oklahoma man named Matthew Durham was sentenced in a US federal court to 40 years in prison for molesting eight children at a Nairobi orphanage. Years earlier, a prominent Italian Catholic priest was accused of molesting boys in his care, and while Kenyan authorities dropped charges for a lack of evidence, suspicion still lingers.

At least 83 children ages 9 months to 18 years lived in Dow's home before it was closed in 2017, after two girls escaped and their parents filed cases with the police.

Those tip-offs and others led to the arrest of Dow's wife, Mary Rose, who ran the orphanage with him, on child abuse charges. Dow, however, "managed to escape" to the United States, where he insisted on his and his wife's innocence, according to Simon Chelugui, Kenya's minister of labour and social services. Kenyan authorities said that they informed Interpol, the international policing body, of the allegations against Dow, but that he remained free in Pennsylvania, where he continued to deny any wrongdoing.

In an email to his funders and supporters in September 2017, Dow explained his wife's arrest and his decision to flee Kenya as resulting from "an orchestrated effort by a number of disgruntled youth, dysfunctional family members, a former employee and some family members" who had "fanned a fire of rebellion and hatred over the locals and authorities“.

On her trip back to Kenya, Ruto took stock of the community's anger. She gained the trust of the abused girls and their parents and took down their gut-wrenching version of events in notepads and videos on her phone.

This case is a textbook example of the ways in which the public can assist law enforcement in bringing sexual predators like Dow, and other criminals, to justice.

Twelve- and 14-year-old girls told her about being taken by Mary Rose to a clinic to have "matchsticks" put in their upper arms. Recognizing them as the birth-control implant Norplant, Ruto began to understand the extent of the crimes that the husband and wife who ran the home might have committed.

Kenyan and US investigators would later confirm Ruto's hunch, with McSwain describing the procedure as a way for Dow to "perpetrate his crimes without fear of impregnating his victims" in a Department of Justice news release on the case.

"The girls would tell me how Dow would take the older ones, a different one each time, and force them to have sex with him," she said on a trip back to Kenya last year. The girls spoke of being forced to drink alcohol or eat soap if they disobeyed any advances Dow made. Court documents in the U.S. trial against Dow as well as the Kenyan trial for Mary Rose include testimony from girls relaying the same experiences.

Mary Rose was found guilty in January 2018 on four counts of child abuse, but was released after paying a fine of about $500 in lieu of two years' imprisonment. During the trial, in which she pleaded not guilty, she told a Kenyan court that she took girls to get birth-control implants because they were "promiscuous." (Mary Rose has since left Kenya. She did not respond to a request for comment, and US law enforcement authorities would not say why she wasn't charged alongside her husband.)

That same year, from her home just down the road from Dow's in Pennsylvania, Ruto sought what information she could about him, using his public Facebook page to contact people in his network. She even knocked on Dow's door, but he didn't open it. She enlisted a Facebook group called KWITU - Kenyan Women in the United States - to help raise public outcry in Pennsylvania.

When Ruto approached the police in Lancaster, they referred her to the district attorney's office, which passed her to the State Department and ultimately the US Embassy in Kenya.

"I hit a wall there. Nobody would commit to following it up," she said. "For the longest time, I wondered, will someone hear me, will someone believe me? Dow had been saying Kenyans are volatile people, jealous people - that people made this all up to try and take his land. I was afraid people were going to believe that."

After several months of trying, Ruto changed course and took her investigation to the LNP, a newspaper in Lancaster. She believes that is what it took to get US authorities more seriously involved. Just days after the LNP piece published, she got a call from the FBI requesting a meeting. Dow was arrested months later after the FBI concluded its own investigation.

To cooperate with that investigation, Ruto kept her involvement mostly to herself at the request of law enforcement officials.

But locals who live in the area around the orphanage say they knew of her involvement and admired her decision to help instead of just returning home to the United States. In Kenya, it often takes money or status to spur the police to file cases or otherwise pursue justice. She had influence in a way few in the village did.

"If it were not for Maggie's extreme efforts, everybody and everything would have been in darkness," said Davis Bett, who used to work as a gardener at the orphanage.

Bett and other employees had confronted Dow about his abusive behaviour and also tried to alert local social services officials, but say they were rebuffed.

"At one point, I reached out to the children's department and one of the officials told me that the home was 'a small America in the village' and that I should leave Gregory alone," Bett said.

Ruto, Bett and others say that, based on their conversations with girls from the home, Dow sexually abused more than the four in whose cases he was convicted. They also say Kenyan authorities have been slow to investigate the deaths of children at the home like 9-month-old James.

Local officials say that James's body was exhumed and that an autopsy was performed in June 2019. But no cause of death was determined and the body was not returned to his family members, who say they are still waiting for communication from the government.

"I allowed my daughter to take her children to the White man because of poverty," said Lucia Langat, 50, James's grandmother. "I do not think any person in this village can ever give their children out to a White man again."

After the orphanage closed, the children were sent to other homes or back to parents who had left them there as infants and toddlers.

Since then, Kenya has imposed a moratorium on foreigners opening orphanages, and requires more-stringent background checks to be done during the processing of missionary visas. Locals supported those moves and were pleased that Dow will potentially spend the rest of his life in prison, but they expressed bitterness at being left alone to cope with the trauma.

Dow "deserved a life sentence. These children called him 'Dad.' That was a deep betrayal," said Mary Rotich, Langat's neighbour. "What can ease the suffering of these families is compensation to make their lives better."

Ruto, too, is haunted by the cases the FBI was ultimately unable to corroborate. It is part of what spurred her to enroll this year in an online criminal justice course, which she attends in between gruelling shifts taking care of coronavirus patients at a Lancaster nursing home.

"It was not just four girls," Ruto said. "The rest of the victims and their families deserve so much better. You can't say that justice has been fully done yet." IOL

Soldiers are deployed to the base in Kenya for hot weather training. File pic

A number of British soldiers in Kenya have been taken to hospital suffering from COVID-19 after an outbreak of the virus at the training camp in the country.

Two soldiers were airlifted by helicopter to the Aga Khan hospital in Nairobi for medical treatment, and two more were driven four hours by ambulance to the facility in the capital. 

All are said to be "comfortable, alert, in bed and eating", according to an Army source.

The news puts in doubt initial claims by the Army that the outbreak was contained and limited to only a small number of soldiers.

Officially, only 11 personnel have tested positive, but Sky News has been told that soldiers have been mixing in close quarters, eating and working together albeit in bubbles, and they fear that the virus is now widespread amongst them.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that 320 men and women are now in "enhanced isolation" and some have been forced to live under bivouac tents for 10 days. 

The Army is following a number of procedures to prevent the spread of coronavirus during deployments.

Soldiers must isolate in barracks before they leave the UK and a negative PCR test is required, 92 hours prior to deployment.

Upon arrival in Kenya, soldiers are transferred directly to the barracks and remain in their "flight households" for a mandatory six-day controlled acclimatisation and isolation period.

But claims by the Ministry of Defence that the soldiers are having their temperatures taken three times a day have been dismissed as "a total lie" by troops on the ground.

"It's chaos," one soldier said. Another described the handling of the situation by senior officers as "a clusterf**k".

"We've been hearing from more and more soldiers deeply worried about catching COVID-19 and concerned that protocol isn't being followed," Alfie Usher from the military website Forces Compare told Sky News.

"The rules we're all used to following in the UK don't seem to apply on training in Kenya." 

Commenting on the outbreak, an Army spokesman said: "The soldiers are in Kenya for training that is essential to maintain operational readiness and is conducted under strict COVID safety measures.

"All soldiers deploying on exercise had to conduct a period of isolation and test negative prior to travelling."

He added: "The British Army takes the health and wellbeing of personnel and the local community in Kenya very seriously.

"The Ministry of Defence's force health protection measures are being applied to prevent further infections."

Another flight with 150 more soldiers landed in Kenya on Monday evening, despite the outbreak in the camp.

The Kenyan government has been briefed. By Alistair Bunkall, Defence and Security Correspondent, Sky News

By JULIUS MBALUTO

In a book tilted ‘A theory of justice’ Philosopher and the writer John Rawls argues that those who hold extreme views against the majority in any society should not be given public platforms.

What does this mean? You see, we live in societies where given the chance everyone would carry on doing what they wish to regardless of the consequences therein. It is human nature to pursue self-interests in most of the things people do.

However, modern societies are regulated by a framework which ensures all live together harmoniously. This framework reflects on justice and fairness. It reflects on freedoms we all enjoy. It reflects on rights which we hold as individuals. Without such legal framework, we shall live in anarchy.

This therefore calls for tolerance of divergent views. It calls for respect to those who hold those divergent views. It calls for protection of the rights of those who hold such views. However, as John Rawls would have it, only those who hold extreme views like a man who picks up a microphone and calls for many people to be discriminated against or even killed, such characters, John advocates they should be denied access to any public platform.

The reason for this is that whatever they say threatens to tear the society apart. In essence, John argues that your rights stop where mine start. Hence, tolerance for each other remain the driving force for a peaceful co-existence by all members of any society.

Watching the current political trends in Kenya, I can say for sure the Kenyan public platforms have been taken over by politicians who wants power so desperately and to get it, they don’t care who gets hurt on the way, they simply want power by any means necessary.

Our politicians, across board never stop to engage in politics regardless of where they are. We see them in funerals where some even forget to condole the bereaved families and engage in their politics straightaway. We have seen them in Churches where campaigning for popular narratives seems to have been normalized. 

These politicians keep the country on a political campaign mode throughout. Just imagine the impact of this on development and the economy of the country.

Take Jubilee government for example. The President Uhuru Kenyatta focused on Big Four Agenda and BBI (Building Bridges Initiative) but his deputy William Ruto opposes BBI and is busy campaigning for 2022 elections.

Well, In his novel, Chinua Achebe once wrote, “the centre cannot hold, things fall apart”. In the bible too, it is written, a house divided amongst itself cannot stand. 

Without any shadow of doubt, Kenya is experiencing serious political divisions. At the national level, we have William Ruto’s Hustler movement and as well the BBI (Building Bridges Initiative) led by the President Uhuru Kenyatta and former PM Rt Hon Raila Odinga both going at it hammer and tongs.

We have seen politicians insulting their opponents and worst still paying goons to stone their opponents. The violence in Kenol in Muranga County in Kenya, the stoning of Raila’s convoy by supporters of Deputy President William Ruto at Githurai and the violence in Kisii where politicians clobbered each other during a funeral should awaken us to the great danger political intolerance poses.

We have also seen cars and buses been burned because of the hustler verses dynasties narrative. It is imperative that Kenyan leaders sober up, pose for a moment and for once know words have power.

Words can build. Words can tear. Words can ignite fire. Words can put off fire. Every word uttered matter. So Kenyan leaders, preach peace, learn to tolerate political differences and know that we only have one country which we intend to preserve.