High Stakes: Political Violence and the 2013 Elections in Kenya

Kenya will hold general elections on March 4, the first elections since the serious violence that engulfed the country after the 2007 polls and the first under Kenya’s new constitution. Inter-ethnic clashes and police violence after the 2007 elections left up to 1,300 people dead and more than 650,000 displaced.

This report demonstrates that the underlying causes of past election-related violence remain in place, and in some parts of the country the tensions have escalated. A combination of inaction by the authorities in some regions and abusive or discriminatory conduct in others, plus a failure to implement promised reform, has led Kenya into another election where the risk of violence and human rights violations remains perilously high.

Copyright © 2013 Human Rights Watch

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Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 1-56432-986-0

Cover design by Rafael Jimenez