PRESENTATION ON KENYA Commissioner Dr. Ahmen Yasin: Social, political and economic factors affecting the operations of a commission I want to divide my talk into about four sections. One: I want us to look at ourselves, who we are, so that we understand where we are coming from; then we look at our work and programs to see if we can deduce any areas that we can discuss further. We will also look at challenges in terms of social, economic, and political factors and finally we will look at the way forward and some thoughts and issues that we may want to reflect on. Just as an introduction, some of you may be aware that in 2007 we had a contested presidential election and there was Justice Kriegler from South Africa who chaired this Commission as a result of this disputed Presidential election. Kenyans will never know who won that election. So what happened between January and February 2008? We killed each other. About a thousand people were killed. Over 600 000 people were displaced and as we are talking now the last batch is being relocated as well. So we invited the regional and international friends to come and mediate our dispute. The African Union became handy, we had various people coming in and out and eventually Kofi Annan was appointed to chair a Council of Eminent Persons composed of the President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa and Graca Machel. On the 20th of February 2008 we signed a peace accord. So a national dialogue and reconciliation framework was negotiated and it was agreed that the winner of the elections was to become the President and whoever was number two becomes the Prime Minister. There was also a Vice President from another big party. Truth Commissions: the Best Practices 57