Human Rights Defenders at Risk

Robert Wanjala

My name is Robert Wanjala. I am a journalist by training and a passionate advocate of human rights, especially media freedom and the safety of journalists.

My career in journalism began in 2009, one year after the ethnic violence that erupted in Kenya following a disputed presidential election on 28 December 2007. The two-month period of carnage left more than 1,300 dead and over 600,000 others uprooted from their homes and forced to live in run-down camps for the internally displaced. Families and victims of this terrible ethnic violence then were still bearing the scars from fires, severe arrow or gun wounds, and deep cuts from machetes. It would be an understatement to call that whole episode dehumanizing. 

Despite my limited experience with conflict reporting, I felt compelled to amplify the voice of victims and the families of those affected by the violence and their pursuit of justice. My primary goal was to give them a voice and make their situation known to the rest of the world. I began writing about these stories in order to bring our leaders' attention to the pains and sufferings that many families were experiencing.

I have also written about other issues, including land ownership and land grabbing, another emotive subject in Kenya. In addition, I have investigated and published on the killings and disappearances of human rights activists, journalists, and witnesses in the trial of high-level government officials accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of crimes against humanity in Kenya following the electoral violence of December 2007.

My stories have appeared in national and international media outlets such as the Mirror Weekly, Reject Magazine, the Institute for War and Peace Report, Africa Times among others. I believe that my reporting on grievances arising from election violence became part of national discourse on healing and national reconciliation. There were land compensations for some of the victims whose stories I have covered. However, my reporting career took a dark turn in April 2015, following the murder of my editor, John Kituyi, when we were both targeted for murder in connection with our investigation into individuals suspected of buying and threatening prosecution witnesses against two prominent Kenyan politicians.

The shadow of these two connected tragedies – the violence in 2007/08 and the murder of my colleague and editor – continues to shape my work as an advocate for press freedom including the safety of journalists. I want to ensure that journalists can still tell stories as powerful as the ones we published at the Mirror Weekly without paying as high a price as our team did.

From a bustling newsroom to a press freedom advocate. Since 2015, I have been a proponent of the protection of journalists, particularly in the area of monitoring, documenting and reporting acts of violence directed against journalists and other human rights activists in the East African region.

Meanwhile, I have taken a break from the rigors of front-line work to re-energize here at the University of York's Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR).  However, I will spend some of my respite time here at CAHR to explore and undertake a research project that aims to address the challenges that I have observed when monitoring and documenting threats and attacks on HRDs, including journalists.

While many organizations record incidents of attacks, few record the data related to gender of the victims of the attacks. This is the case despite the fact that the organizations across the civic space recognize the importance of understanding the gender dimension of the problem. As a result, I am spending my time at CAHR to explore and on effective and systematic monitoring and documenting methodologies that I believe will further enhance my monitoring capabilities, increase knowledge, and bolster skills that will be a useful and most relevant asset in helping to increase both the raw data available on threats and violence against journalists and HRDS in Kenya and East Africa.