Tag Archives: Kenya
7 March 2013
At the Conference of the Parties of the of the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), eight states (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and China) were identified as key to the trade in ivory and were threatened with trade sanctions if they do not address failures in protection against poaching, and failures in seizing illegal ivory trade.
Six of these states are states which most ivory passes through (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam), the other two are the states were most ivory is bought (China and Thailand).
The news of threat of trade sanctions coincides with the publication of a report that details the increase in levels of poaching. The report concludes that illicit ivory trade activity and the weight of ivory behind this trade has more than doubled since 2007, and is over three times greater than it was in 1998.
Source: The Guardian | Two-thirds of forest elephants killed by ivory poachers in past decade
Source: UNEP, CITES, IUCN, TRAFFIC | Elephants in the Dust - The African Elephant Crisis | A Rapid Response Assessment
Source: The Miami Herald | Ivory trade nations face threat of sanctions
27 July 2012
As part of U.S. efforts to fight drugs, an elite unit of Ghana’s counternarcotics police is trained by U.S. officials. There are plans to train other counternarcotics police squads in Kenya and Nigeria under the so-called ‘West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative’.
(West) Africa is increasingly seen as ‘the new frontier’ in terms of counternarcotics, since cartels from Latin American are more and more using pooly governed states in Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe.
Source: New York Times | U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels
1 September 2011
Kenya and Uganda have agreed to deploy a joint security team to controversial Migingo Island. The two countries, which have been claiming ownership of the Island, will deploy 12 police officers each. The agreement was reached on Wednesday following a meeting in Kampala of the countries’ police chiefs. They agreed to adopt Standard Operating Procedures to guide joint security deployment on the island.
Source: http://allafrica.com
21 July 2011
The UK High Court today permitted Kenyan nationals to sue the government of the United Kingdom for acts of torture that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s in the former UK colony of Kenya. It therewith rejected the Government’s position that it could not be liable because the torture happened outside of the UK and that Kenya had its own legal colonial government, which was responsible for the camps. Although not yet decided on merits, the case already seems relevant to the question of sharing responsibility between local governments and States that act as colonial or mandated powers.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk