A recent survey on perceptions of security in Kenya found that the highest area of concern among household respondents was safety during electioneering periods. Specifically, 48.4 per cent felt most unsafe during political campaigns: an understandable anxiety, given Kenya’s recent political history and its recurrent electoral violence.
A new Issue Brief from the Small Arms Survey—Political Conflict and Vulnerabilities: Firearms and electoral violence in Kenya—examines the phenomenon of electoral violence, tracing its roots to a history of politically instigated ethnic violence dating back to the reintroduction of pluralist democracy in the 1990s, and further back to the colonial era. It also discusses the largely overlooked connections between hotspots for political violence and armed violence in other areas, such as that associated with cattle raids by pastoralist communities.
Read the Issue Brief