JUMA: It's time to criminalise enforced disappearances in Kenya.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions recently released a press statement on the case of the enforced disappearance of Mohamed Zaid Sami Kidwai, Zulfikar Ahmad Khan, and their driver Nicodemus Mwania Mwange.

In the statement, DPP Renson Mulele listed a myriad of charges to be preferred against the 15 former law enforcement officers.

While the first line of the statement by the DPP accurately captured the crime in question as enforced disappearance, none of the charges listed on the second page of the statement explicitly mentioned enforced disappearance.

This was not by mistake - the office of the DPP has in this case come to terms with the reality that enforced disappearance while a crime of grave proportions, and recognised internationally, is not a crime in Kenya when committed in a manner that is not widespread - which would make it a crime against humanity under the provisions of the Rome Statute - as domesticated by the International Crimes Act of 2005 in Kenya.

Over the years, the Police Reform Working Group, the Social Justice Centers Working Group, the Missing Voices Coalition, the Kenya National Commission of Human Rights, and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, among others have called on the government to criminalise enforced disappearances to no avail.

One high-profile deliberation on enforced disappearances took place under the auspices of the Senate Standing Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

In its report titled Report on Inquiry into extrajudicial executions and Enforced Disappearances in Kenya, the committee recommended that the Attorney General initiate the process of ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in accordance with Section 7 of the Treaty Making and Ratification Act.

The follow-up actions of the Standing Committee were thereafter affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Post-COVID-19, the implementation of the report was further affected by the 2022 electioneering period and transition into the 13th Parliament.

Civil society actors have equally held advocacy activities aimed at attracting attention to the need for criminalisation of enforced disappearance in Kenya.

On the 20th of June, International Justice Mission Kenya in partnership with ICJ Kenya held a webinar on this very issue.

In the resolutions that followed deliberations by among others the then DPP Noordin Haji, Li Fung, UNODC, Wamaitha Kimani of IJM and...