The documents on this page were provided by Professor Ronald Slye in connection with his book, The Kenyan TJRC: An Outsider’s View from the Inside (Cambridge University Press, 2018) www.cambridge.org/9781108434508. The links below will take you to the various documents from the Kenyan TJRC, including documents and links specifically cited in the book. Just after the links you will find a brief summary of the types of documents provided in each section of the website.
Browse The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Kenya Collections:
I. Core TJRC Related Documents
The Core TJRC Related Documents section includes the legislation establishing the Commission, as well as all of the amendments to that legislation that I was able to collect. I have also included a version of the Act that I created for my own purposes, that reflects the substantive changes made to the 2008 Act and that (except for the various extensions we received) is the Act that substantively governed our operations. The public hearing transcripts section includes all of the Hansard transcripts of the public hearings that I was able to collect. Some of the transcripts of our public hearings are missing here, and I fear may be lost forever. Not included here are the transcripts of the in camera hearings, as those were conducted with the understanding that their contents would only be made public if the participants agreed. Finally, the Final Report section includes the Report as it was released to the public and handed over to the President, as well as the Dissent written by the three international Commissioners. I have also included a copy of Volume 2B of the Report that reflects the Report as it was written prior to the interference by the President’s office. That interference is recounted in Chapter 1 of the book.
II. Pre TJRC Documents
The Pre-TJRC Documents include the task force report on the need for a Kenyan truth commission written by the committee chaired by Professor Makau Mutua. I have also included here relevant documents from the Kenyan National Dialogue and Reconciliation project chaired by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. I also include here the reports of previous Kenyan commissions of inquiry, including the Waki Report that was instrumental in the ICC Prosecutor’s decision to open an investigation into the Kenyan situation.
III. TJRC Operational Documents
The TJRC Operational Documents contain a number of documents that we developed to govern both the internal operations of the Commission, as well as our public activities like our hearings. I have also included other relevant internal documents that are not directly discussed in the book.
IV. Indemnity Act
The section on the Indemnity Act includes the original indemnity act legislation, as well as the Commission’s legal analysis of the impact of the Act on the operation of the Commission.
V. Kiplagat Tribunal and Related Documents
This section includes numerous documents related to the tribunal established by the Chief Justice to evaluate the conflicts of interest of the Commission’s Chair, Bethwel Kiplagat. Included are not just the formal documents concerning the creation of the Tribunal (the petition filed by the Commission; the petition filed by civil society; the Gazette notices related to the tribunal), but also internal documents related to the controversies created by the presence of Ambassador Kiplagat on the Commission, and documents related to litigation that arose from those conflicts and the creation of the Tribunal.
VI. Financial Scandal Documents
The Financial Scandal includes the letters written by the Commission to the relevant Parliamentary Committee’s requesting an investigation into the handling of the Commission’s finances by the Ministry of Justice, as well as the only financial accounting the Commission received from the Ministry of Justice that raised concerns about how the Commission’s monies were being spent.
VII. Academic and Civil Society Analysis
The Academic and Civil Society Analysis section includes the academic and civil society publications that are cited in the book. Some are directly related to the Commission itself, while others concern related matters such as the 2007 Post Election Violence and the subsequent investigations arising from that violence. I have also included here some of the monitoring reports prepared by South Consulting on the implementation of the agreement reached between the Kenyan Government and the African Union’s Panel of Eminent African Personalities. Unfortunately the reports appear to be no longer available on the internet, and while I had downloaded many of the reports, I did not secure all of them. I am thus missing the third report, and for the fourth report I only have the annex.
VIII. ICC Related Documents
The ICC related documents include difficult to find documents from the African Union concerning the ICC that have been referenced in the book. I have NOT included copies of the ICC jurisprudence, as those decisions are relatively easy to access on the ICC’s website. This section also includes documents related to the effort to create a special tribunal as recommended by the Waki Commission, and Kenyan litigation related to the failure of the Kenyan Government to arrest Omar al-Bashir upon his visit to Kenya in 2010.
IX. Government Documents and Regulations
This section includes miscellaneous documents from the Kenyan Government, some of which are discussed in the book. This includes the Cabinet Statement from July 2009 proposing that the TJRC be altered to be the primary institution investigating responsibility fro the violence after the 2007 election, as well as copies of previous Commissions of Inquiry.
X. Page References and Links
The Page References and Links section includes a document that is organized by page number in the book, with hyperlinks to the document or documents mentioned on those pages. I have also included here a list of hyperlinks that are mentioned in the book so that the reader can click on the link rather than type in the URL to access the document.