Post-Election Crisis in Kenya and Internally Displaced Persons: A Critical Appraisal

The announcement of the disputed 2007 presidential election results in Kenya on December 27th, 2007 led to what could be described as the worst political crisis in Kenyan post-colonial history. This massacre claimed over 1000 lives of children, men, and women, and left about 600,000 Kenyans internally displaced. The immediate and remote causes of the crisis have been analyzed by different experts. Thus, it is pertinent to note that remote causes of the violence are traceable to the advent of multi-party politics in the 1990s and it was manifested in different forms in different parts of the country. Although exacerbated by political feuds, the violence had its roots in ethnic rivalries and struggle for ancestral lands. The internal feud had been brewing for decades and the election results were the catalyst and immediate cause that finally ignited the conflict. This essay undertakes a cause-effect analysis of the conflict with focus on the internal and global responses to Internally Displaced Persons.