Emmah Wabuke holds an LL.B from University of Nairobi and an LL.M from Harvard Law School. She is also an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. Emmah is a Lecturer at Strathmore Law School and a Research Fellow at Strathmore Institute of Advanced Studies in International Criminal Justice where she heads the Gender Peace and Security Centre. She has an interest in the intersection between gender and national security in Africa.
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African regional bodies, are increasingly taking a larger role in promotion of peace and security in their respective regions. This is in stark contrast to previous years, when the main concern of these bodies was economic.
The at-times fraught relationship between Kenya and Somalia took a new turn in 2014, when Somalia submitted a compromis before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming that Kenya was conducting illegal acts in what Somalia claimed to be part of its territory. The territory in question is a 100,000 square kilometer (38,610 square mile) triangular patch created by projecting the Kenya-Somali border eastward into the Indian Ocean.
This morning, the Kenyan Supreme Court announced it cancelled last month’s presidential election and ordered a new election within 60 days. Chief Justice David Maraga affirmed that the August 8th election, which declared incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta the winner by a margin of 1.4 million votes, was not “conducted in accordance with the constitution.” Justice Maraga stated the election commission had committed irregularities “in the transmission of results,” although more details on this conclusion have not yet been provided.
On March 17, 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) to mount an operation in the Rift Valley to quell hostilities in the region. KDF has also been deployed to conduct an operation in Boni Forest in coastal Kenya to flush out suspected Al Shabaab militia reported to have taken refuge in the forest.