– Source:Kenya has been praised as a “model for the world” when it comes to peacebuilding efforts to manage outbreaks of violence within its borders. The country has systematically put in place a peacebuilding architecture rooted in a history of local peace initiatives. These date back to the early 1990s.
Over this period, the Wajir Peace and Development Committee emerged in the country’s north-eastern region. The committee successfully addressed decades of inter-clan violence in Wajir, an arid county bordering Somalia. It also inspired the emergence of numerous local peace committees across the country.
These committees have been set up in some other African countries – like Ghana, South Africa, Sierra Leone and Burundi – and continue to contribute informally to local peacebuilding in these states.
In Kenya, the committees became institutionalised after post-election violence in 2007-08 and a mediation process led by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. They now form part of the national peacebuilding architecture.
Violence triggered by the contested 2007 presidential election outcome resulted in the killing of more than 1,000 people. The mediation process led to a power-sharing agreement signed by the presidential contenders Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga.
The country’s peacebuilding architecture is now supported by several policies and frameworks. These include the constitution of 2010. The system that’s been built has the capacity to connect a wide variety of peacebuilding actors – both state and non-state, formal and informal – at all levels of society. This helps resolve conflict and build resilience.
The Kenyan government initiated a review of the peacebuilding architecture in 2023. It involved a lengthy consultation process and high levels of participation among Kenyans. The National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management led the way, assisted by an independent panel of 13 peacebuilding experts.
Released at the end of 2024, the review looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the architecture.
It offers a vision for building a robust peacebuilding system, along with an actionable roadmap. One lesson is that Kenya can use the capacities and unique approaches of different peacebuilding actors. At the local level, peace committees showed that they made contributions to early warning systems and building confidence in communities.
However, insufficient resources and a consistent focus on electoral violence prevent the system from addressing other drivers of conflict.
The strengths
Local peace committees, with membership typically drawn from ordinary citizens, religious groups or local civil society organisations, play a crucial role. They support dialogue around conflict issues. They promote trust and understanding, and can build a constructive environment for conflict resolution.
Their information gathering feeds into the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Conflict Early Warning and Response System (CEWARN) to prevent election violence. Local peace committees have contributed to negotiating local disputes. They have also helped de-polarise ethnic identities and facilitated local peace agreements. One example was the Modogashe Declaration. It sets ground rules to solve conflict and local disputes over pasture, water access and cattle rustling.
We are researchers in Norway on a project focusing on civilian agency, local peace and resilience building. Our own interviews with committee members in Nakuru – a county greatly affected by the violence in 2007-08 – found that peace committee members continued to work together and share conflict-sensitive information with local stakeholders. These include administration officers and religious leaders, and covered periods during and after the 2022 elections.
Further, local peace committees can offer women valuable opportunities for participation in conflict management. This contributes to their protection, for example from sexual violence.
The weaknesses
Despite these successes, Kenya’s peacebuilding architecture faces pressing challenges.
First, local peace committees aren’t perfect. They can be manipulated by politicians seeking to build local support. They can also compete with traditional actors such as elders in conflict resolution.
Kenya’s institutionalisation of local peacebuilding strengthened information flow across all levels. But it also threatens to undermine local peacebuilding agency and autonomy. Formalising local peace committees can spur an unhealthy monetisation of peacebuilding, with some members joining for financial gain. This threatens to erode the voluntary character of peacebuilding as a common good and undermine genuine priorities for peace.
Second, elite-level politics in Kenya creates the persistent risk of electoral violence. This diverts attention and resources away from other long-standing causes of conflict. The drivers of violence in Kenya are varied and region specific. They include disputes over access to land, and marginalisation of ethnic and religious communities. Climate change threatens to worsen competition and conflict between pastoralists and farming communities.
Our analysis of event data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data shows that communal violence is the deadliest form of political violence in Kenya. For their part, fatalities related to election violence have decreased. This underscores the urgent need to consistently invest in prevention and local peacebuilding beyond narrow electoral periods.
Fatalities in Kenya by type of armed violence: 2010-2023
Electoral competition can escalate violence between pastoralists and farmers, but it’s the persistence of communal conflicts that represents a serious threat. Communal violence particularly affects Kenya’s arid and semi-arid areas in the Rift Valley, eastern and north-eastern regions.
What next
Our interviews with local peace committee members show that funding for their activities diminishes outside election years. This hampers their capacity to address conflict outside these periods.
Yet research has shown that local peacebuilding can build social resilience against recurrent communal violence. Peacebuilding interventions grounded in local realities are also vital for countering insurgent violence. This is especially important as counterterrorism operations by state forces often trigger cycles of violence rather than resolving underlying issues.
Our research finds that Kenyans place significant trust in local peacebuilders, such as community leaders, elders and women. The review of the country’s peacebuilding architecture proposes a 40% quota for women, youth and people with disabilities in local peace committees.
However, quotas alone may not be sufficient to address the political and cultural challenges that entrench inequality.
Ultimately, political elites need to transform Kenya’s “win at all costs” politics. This way, the country’s mediators and peacebuilders can address the deep social and economic grievances that underpin cycles of violence.
Leonor Toscano’s doctoral research is supported by the grant from the European Research Council’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (852816; PI: Jana Krause). Leonor Toscano conducted interviews with LPC members in Kenya.
Jana Krause received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant number 852816 (ResilienceBuilding).
Marika Miner’s post-doctoral research is also supported by the grant from the European Research Council’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (852816; PI: Jana Krause).
By Leonor Oliveira Toscano, PhD Candidate in Political Science, University of Oslo And
Jana Krause, Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo And
Marika Miner, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oslo
