Skip to main content

Day 19: AMAN, US Embassy

    We started the day at 10 am at AMAN which advocates for the indigenous peoples rights, land tenure, wellbeing.
    • Voice in the govt. for indigenous people
    • Model for civil society in other countries => indigenous people

    Jokowi has not delivered promises on six commitments to improve the lives of indigenous people, even after delivering 12million votes
    • Government public policy has ignored indigenous people
    • Criminalizing of people, activitsts etc.
    • Development aggression: the use of development to take away the rights, lives, land, resources of people
    • Engaging politicians
      • Parliamentarians, district heads etc.
    • UN rapporteur report: provides bullets to bring coverage and agitation on the rights of the people
      • Info for addressing issues on the global platform


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Opportunities and challenges presented by the AfCFTA

President Kenyatta joined other African heads of state on March 21 in signing the #AfCFTA. What does this mean for Kenya? It means that Kenya's goods and services could have a broader market to sell to. It also means that locally made goods and services will face increased competition from similar products in the African market, especially if other countries have a comparative advantage. What is the projected net effect of these two sides of trade? Well, it's difficult to predict. It depends on which goods are on the schedule of reduction of tariffs both for other countries and Kenya. Pres. Kenyatta signs the AfCFTA Image courtesy of PSCU   Looking at other similar regional pacts such as North America's #NAFTA or the EU, we can see that trade between countries increases many fold. But as in the case of Mexico which saw the bankrupting of peasant farmers due to cheap corn and other agricultural produce from subsidized American farms, the aggregate effect might be po...

What Africa may learn from Trump presidency

President-Elect Trump successfully ran under the banner of making America first, reducing foreign 'interference' and trying new ways to work with partners on the international scene to solve some intractable challenges. The first tenet, in my opinion, is something that should interest African nations, because of the collective acknowledged viewpoint of making Africa work for Africans. Looking back at the powers that scrambled for Africa more than 125 years ago to present day, we see challenges that have been brought about by the fact that Africa still remains a playground for western powers. The Democratic Republic of Congo fails to move forward due to the strong interests that keep fueling violence in order to continue the parasitic extraction of the vast resources with little benefit to the people of Congo. The CFA countries of Central and West Africa still depend on precolonial arrangements with France to manage their monetary policies, stealing the initiative fro...

Look, I am become a diplomat

"You speak very good English, where did you learn?" a person I just met asks. "In Kenya, in school…" I calmly reply. "Wow! You speak English in Kenya?" He continues. "Oh yes, we do …" The conversation goes into how we do (not) live with lions as pets and how I don’t run like "all" other Kenyans they've seen on TV. If you are wondering, this is an actual conversation I have had with persons I have met here in the US. This is not to say every conversation I have had goes this way. On the contrary, in the greater Washington metropolitan area where I live, this is the exception. Any time I have to field questions about Kenya, however, I feel as if the responsibility to represent Kenya and communicate its brand is upon my shoulders. This is despite not getting any training on this aspect of my travel experience. Some other well-meaning people have said, once hearing I am from Kenya, that they visited Uganda, Rwanda, Bots...