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SummaryWe are very good at saying we don’t leave a single stone unturned, but wedon’t turn a single stone. Maybe we turn pebbles.… Small stones are turned.The big ones, no one dares.—Kalenjin elder, on the lack of justice following post-election violence,Eldoret, May 27, 2011Four years after the onset of Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence—and with a newelection campaign underway—Kenya’s government has done little to provide justice tovictims. The government has failed to ensure the prosecution of perpetrators in all but ahandful of the 1,133 or more killings committed during the violence, which pitted rulingparty supporters and the police against opposition-linked armed groups and civilians.Victims of rape, assault, arson, and other crimes similarly await justice.The Office of the Attorney General, through the Department of Public Prosecutions, hascompiled lists of thousands of cases allegedly linked to the election violence, ranging frompetty theft and rioting to rape and murder. But despite efforts to prioritize and act onserious cases in the immediate aftermath of the violence, there have been few prosecutionsand fewer convictions, as well as a near total lack of investigations of those who organizedand financed the violence. Hundreds of inquest files literally gather dust in police stations.The Commission to Investigate Post-Election Violence (CIPEV, also known as the WakiCommission after its president, Justice Philip Waki), which was formed in the wake of theviolence, conducted preliminary investigations and recommended establishing a specialtribunal, with a mandate to try the persons alleged to be most responsible for the violence.In December 2008 President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga signed anagreement to establish the tribunal and implement the Waki recommendations in full. Butthe Kenyan government and parliament have since largely disregarded this commitment.The parliament and the cabinet shot down several proposals in 2009 to establish a specialtribunal. Some parliamentarians said they rejected the bills because they preferred to seecrimes against humanity tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Someof those same parliamentarians later hypocritically called on Kenya to withdraw from theRome Statute establishing the ICC. Kibaki suggested that the Truth, Justice andReconciliation Commission (TJRC), formed after the violence, could provide accountability.But while the commission has held hearings to elicit information about the violence, it isnot a judicial mechanism and cannot prosecute suspects.3 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | DECEMBER 2011