2007 Activities2007 Activities
East Africa is a region where democratic development is both moving forward and encountering setbacks. The Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), responding to political change, worked to foster democratic development in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda by prioritizing four key areas of activity: governance and accountability, justice and human rights, media and access to information, and regional initiatives.
Corruption remains a major challenge. The initiative partnered with the Africa Centre for Open Governance and the Media Analysis and Research Services Organization to increase transparency and the role of civil society groups in holding public institutions accountable. OSIEA helped community groups in Kenya monitor government budgets, and environmental organizations in Uganda improve the country’s natural resource use policies.
OSIEA supported work to defend and promote the human rights of marginalized and disadvantaged communities. It funded efforts focusing on the issues of citizenship and statelessness, particularly among groups such as ethnic Somali Kenyans and Kenyan Nubians, and provided support to the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Kenya to protect people swept up in the arrests, secret detentions, torture, and disappearances conducted by the Kenyan government against people accused of having links to al Qaeda.
To address rampant sexual violence against women and girls, OSIEA supported a women’s coalition that sought to hold the government responsible for implementing a new sexual offenses law through the training of police, lawyers, and administrative personnel. In partnership with the Zanzibar Female Lawyers Association, the initiative helped improve the justice system’s response to violations of women’s rights and documented legal provisions that discriminated against women.
With OSIEA funding, the Human Rights Network (Hurinet) worked to popularize Uganda’s Access to Information Act—one of the first in Africa—and to strengthen implementation of the law. To promote democracy and good governance, an OSIEA/AfriMAP project in 2007 examined the African Peer Review Mechanism process in Kenya, conducting audits of the justice sector, democracy and political participation, and effective public service delivery. The research will be published in 2008.
The HIV epidemic remains an unprecedented public health emergency in the region, thriving on stigma and human rights abuses. A report by OSIEA and the Law and Health Initiative of OSI’s Public Health Program documented how lack of access to legal services exacerbates the HIV crisis in Kenya. With OSIEA support, 10 hospitals in Kenya now integrate legal services into their HIV treatment, and legal assistance programs are being introduced into post-rape care centers and domestic violence programs in Uganda.
