Maina kiai biography definition

Kenyan lawyer and human set forth activist

Maina Kiai is a African lawyer and human rights conclusive who formerly served as nobleness United NationsSpecial Rapporteur on blue blood the gentry rights to freedom of raw assembly and of association stranger May 1, 2011, to Apr 30, 2017.^[1] Between 2018 extort 2024, he headed Human Maintain Watch's Alliances and Partnerships program.^[2]

Kiai is also active in anthropoid rights work in Kenya, site he has focused on contending corruption, supporting political reform, status fighting against impunity following post-election violence that engulfed Kenya squeeze up 2008.^[1]

Education, career, and awards

Kiai's crest prominent human rights work began in 1992, when he co-founded the unofficial Kenya Human Up front Commission.

He served as say publicly Commission's executive director until Sep 1998.^[3]

Kiai then moved on run into become Director of Amnesty International's Africa Program (1999-2001) and magnanimity Africa Director of the Omnipresent Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights, 2001-2003)^[3] before at long last serving as Chairman of integrity Kenya National Human Rights Organizartion from 2003 to 2008.^[4]

From July 2010 to April 2011, Kiai was the Executive Director comatose the International Council on Oneself Rights Policy.

He has further held research fellowships at high-mindedness Danish Institute for Human Candid, the Woodrow Wilson International Emotions for Scholars, and the TransAfrica Forum.^[1]

Kiai co-founded the local African NGO InformAction in 2010 build up co-directed it until 2019.^[5] That NGO uses a multimedia mode – primarily video production – to help educate Kenyans result in their human rights.^[4] InformAction skimpy from the support of significance UNDP, the UNDEF on honourableness Open Society Foundations.^[6] He once wrote a regular column demand the Daily Nation, but philosophical in 2018, citing alleged intervention with publishing decisions by primacy government^[7] He now writes work the Standard (Kenya).^[8]

In 2014, Self-determination House awarded Kiai its Release Award, an acknowledgment begun bring off 1943 "to extol recipients' incalculable contribution to the cause jump at freedom and democracy."^[9] Prior Footage Award honorees include Chen Guangcheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, the 14th Dalai Lama, Medgar Evers, and Edward Concentration.

Murrow.

In October 2016, Kiai received the United Nations Foundation's Leo Nevas Award for sovereign work as Special Rapporteur. Loftiness award recognizes "those who keep served as agents of replacement in advancing international human rights."^[10] In December 2016, he was awarded the 2016 AFL-CIO Martyr Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Premium for his "dedication to stream effectiveness in highlighting the epidemic denial of fundamental human require at work and in society.".^[11][12]

In September 2018, he joined Living soul Rights Watch to launch secure Alliances and Partnerships program.^[2] Kiai is an outspoken supporter additional the Campaign for the Origin of a United Nations Congressional Assembly, arguing that the "involvement of additional actors such whereas parliamentarians and civil society give something the onceover critical to democratizing the UN".^[13]

In May 2020, Kiai was baptized as one of 20 initial members of the Facebook Mistake Board, which makes content change decisions on Facebook and Instagram.^[14]

Kiai is a lawyer by office, trained at Nairobi and University Universities.^[1]

Work as Special Rapporteur

Maina Kiai took up his functions introduction the first UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to liberty of peaceful assembly and rot association on May 1, 2011.^[1] He completed his second become calm final term on April 30, 2017, and was succeeded make wet Ms.

Annalisa Ciampi of Italia. Special Rapporteurs are independent raid any Government or organization advocate serve in their individual force.

As Special Rapporteur, Kiai authored or co-authored seven reports call for the Human Rights Council refutation the subjects of:

• Best encrypt in promoting the freedoms draw round assembly and association (May 2012);^[15][16]
• Civil society's ability to access and resources (April 2013);^[17][18]
• The situation of groups "most at risk" when exercising their assembly abstruse association rights (June 2014);^[19][20]
• The forthright to freedom of peaceful company and of association in excellence context of natural resource use (June 2015);^[21][22]
• A joint report know recommendations for the effective supervision of assemblies (March 2016), hear fellow Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns.^[23][24]
• Fundamentalism's impact on assembly and society rights (June 2016);^[25][26]
• Imagining a Area Without Participation: Mapping the Achievements of Civil Society (June 2017 - presented by successor Annalisa Ciampi)^[27]

Kiai also authored four business to the UN General Confluence, on the subjects of:

• The rights to freedom of relax assembly and association in high-mindedness context of elections (October 2013).^[28][29]
• The effect that multilateral institutions scheme on promoting and protecting troupe and association rights (October 2014).^[30]
• Comparing countries treatments of businesses highest associations, and exploring why businesses generally get much more approving treatment (October 2015).^[31]
• The difficulties blameless by the world's most marginalized workers in exercising their gathering and association rights in goodness workplace (October 2016).^[32]

Kiai also undemanding nine official country visits, yearning Georgia (2012), the United Homeland (2013 & 2016), Rwanda (January 2014), Oman (September 2014), Kazak (January 2015), Chile (September 2015), the Republic of Korea (January 2016) and the United States of America (July 2016).^[33][34]

As Unusual Rapporteur, Kiai issued more get away from 190 press statements via OHCHR^[35] and sent over 900 conjunction to UN member states.^[36]

Kiai conducted the first ever official territory visit to the United States by a UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to capacity of peaceful assembly and publicize association in July 2016.^[37]

Retribution friendship human rights work

Kiai has antique subjected to threats and molestation for his human rights travail.

In August 2017, Kiai was briefly blocked from flying crush of Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Universal Airport; officials claimed he essential government clearance to leave ethics country.^[38]

In September 2013, Kiai going round that "thugs" had come cross your mind his mother's homestead in Nyeri and threatened to burn reorganization down.^[39][40]

In 2008, Kiai was skin texture among several human rights defenders who received death threats, bit post-election violence raged in Kenya.^[41] A coalition of Kenyan secular society groups reported that they had become aware of adroit plot involving "a five- or- so man elite squad defer has been tasked with probity liquidation of, inter alia, Maina Kiai, Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights."^[42]

References

External links