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February 6, 2008

Kirkpatrick part of delegation to Kenya

Group called for immediate end to violence

by Fredrick Nzwili
Ecumenical News International

NAIROBI – Members of a World Council of Churches fact-finding delegation to Kenya have called for an immediate end to the violence that has led to the deaths of about 900 people following disputed presidential election results.

“People are traumatized, frightened and very desperate for solutions,” the Rev. Stig Utnem, a former general secretary of the council on ecumenical and international relations of the Church of Norway, told Ecumenical News International on Feb. 2. “We must do all that we can to end the violence immediately and find a way of ending the political stalemate.”

During its Jan. 30-Feb. 3 mission, the delegation met senior politicians including Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka and opposition leader Raila Odinga, as well as church leaders and the Interreligious Council of Kenya, a grouping with representatives from the Christian, Muslim and Hindu communities.

The seven-member group of church representatives was sent by the World Council of Churches as part of its “Living Letters” initiative in solidarity with churches facing situations of violence.

“The country is on the verge of genocide,” the general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, the Rev. Peter Karanja, was quoted as saying in a news release issued by the WCC during the delegation’s visit.

The WCC group also visited the Nakuru district in the western Rift Valley Province, which has experienced some of the worst violence. There they met displaced families from the Kikuyu and Kalenjin ethnic groups.

“We met people who were exceptionally angry that they had been abused by other peoples,” said the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. “It was a situation of incredible suffering and pain.”

Many people have taken shelter at about 130 camps throughout Kenya. The government estimates the number of people displaced by the violence at 230,000 while some relief agencies put the figure at about half a million.

Kirkpatrick, who heads the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as its stated clerk, said the delegation had found positive attitudes towards reconciliation among government and opposition party officials, church leaders and civil society organizations. Still, he noted, “There is great hope, but I think there is real urgency in the situation.”

Religious leaders have been pressing a settlement of the dispute between incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, leader of the Party of National Unity, who was declared the winner in the Dec. 27 elections, and the Orange Democratic Movement’s Odinga, who says the election was rigged.

Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, a Zimbabwean who is general secretary of the World Young Women’s Christian Association, identified land rights and equal employment opportunity issues as long-term factors that further fanned violence.