Stranded pedestrians in a flooded street in Nairobi. Credit | Eastleigh Voice

Before the Storm Breaks: Why the World Must Act on Disasters Before They Happen

Anticipatory action (AA) is deceptively simple: it is the practice of releasing pre-arranged funding and delivering assistance before a predictable disaster strikes, rather than scrambling to respond after the damage is done. It connects early warning systems — weather forecasts, drought indices, flood models — to pre-agreed plans and pre-committed money, so that when a trigger threshold is crossed, help moves automatically.
Read more
Irungu Houghton is the Executive Director of Amnesty International Kenya. Credit | Amnesty International

Kenya’s Shrinking Freedoms: A Mirror of East Africa’s Deepening Crisis

What distinguishes Kenya, and East Africa more broadly, is the degree to which repression has become both institutionalised and, in some cases, exported. Kenya is not a military junta, nor a post-conflict state clinging to fragile authority. It has functioning courts, a vocal civil society, and a constitution widely praised at its 2010 drafting. That the state is nonetheless deploying anti-terror laws against protesters and directing autopsies to be contradicted by police press releases suggests something more troubling than a governance failure. It suggests a deliberate choice.
Read more
Scroll to Top