By Joyce Joyce Awino Ochieng
It is 10th August 2027. The votes have been cast. Counting is underway. Millions of Kenyans are glued to their screens, waiting for the results. Is the air tense? Is the country calm? Does the uncertainty give way to tension, fear, and a descent to violence and anarchy? Or does it yield to restraint, confidence in the electoral process, and stability? In these critical hours, one question hangs over the country—was the writing on the wall? The answer to this question lies in the days long before the first vote was cast. The manner in which Kenyans navigate the period between the voting and declaration of results determines the events that follow, whether peaceful or otherwise.
We have seen the signs before. Kenya has had a history of electoral-related violence since the establishment of multi-partyism in 1991. During the 2005 constitutional referendum campaign, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights documented incitement and hate speech and called for the investigation and prosecution of 16 sitting and former Members of Parliament. Human Rights Watch later recorded that none of them were investigated or prosecuted. The pattern continued into the 2007 election period. Just before the elections, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights published a report—Still Behaving Badly, a second report under its elections monitoring project that began in October 2007. The report documented the misuse and diversion of public resources, involvement of public officers in political campaigns, incitement and acts of violence, and the use of hate speech by the media and politicians in targeting individuals and communities along gender and ethnic lines.
A Human Rights Watch report dubbed Ballots and Bullets: Organized Political Violence and Kenya’s Crisis of Governance recorded significant violence in Kuresoi, Molo, and Mt. Elgon in the months preceding the 2007 election, resulting in about 200 deaths and 70,000 displacements. In those areas, political competition had already been intertwined with ethnic mobilization and organized violence, a troubling indication of the violence that would later engulf the country. Several leaders were implicated, while some persons of interest arrested for inciting and organizing violence were subsequently released as a result of suspected political interference. Does this ring a bell? In other words, the atrocities that plagued Kenya after the 2007 elections were not entirely unforeseen. Unfortunately, the warnings did not translate into sufficient preventive action. That failure should matter 20 years later.
The violence that followed the disputed 2007 presidential election was devastating. More than 1,100 people were killed, approximately 600,000 were displaced, and thousands more were injured or lost their homes and livelihoods. Sexual violence was also committed on a significant scale. The violence exposed not only the destructive potential of political mobilization but also serious failures by state institutions to protect citizens and hold perpetrators to account. The Waki Commission subsequently recommended the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute those responsible. When Kenya failed to establish such a mechanism, the information contained in the Commission’s sealed envelope was eventually handed to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Among those who were eventually charged at the ICC were Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, both of whom would later serve as president of Kenya. The cases ultimately ended without trial verdicts, following significant evidentiary and witness-related difficulties, including allegations of witness interference and non-cooperation.
The lesson from that experience should not simply be that Kenya once experienced post-election violence. The more difficult lesson is that violence can become predictable when warning signs are repeatedly identified but inadequately acted upon. It is also worth remembering the human consequences beyond the statistics. The violence included sexual violence and resulted in pregnancies. Some of the children born in the aftermath of those violations will be old enough to vote in 2027. They will enter this electoral cycle carrying a history they did not choose. That is another reason why prevention cannot be treated as a matter of political convenience.
Now, we have stronger constitutional institutions, a more established election framework, a more active civil society, and greater capacity to monitor electoral risks. The Kofi Annan Foundation’s Electoral Vulnerability Index 2026–2027 estimates that Kenya faces over 80% probability of some form of electoral violence in the 2027 electoral cycle. This assessment should be treated as an early warning of the possibility of violence and attract sustained interventions to curb the same. Less than a year before the 2027 elections, we have already witnessed the disruption of political gatherings, attacks involving organized groups, deaths and injuries, destruction of property, inflammatory political rhetoric, and growing concern over political intolerance and the conduct of security agencies. These developments sit alongside longer-standing drivers of electoral violence, including ethnic mobilization, economic grievances, youth unemployment, historical grievances, community conflicts, organized criminal groups, and mistrust in public institutions. The information environment has also changed dramatically since 2007. Misinformation and disinformation can now travel almost instantaneously, while artificial intelligence introduces new possibilities for creating and amplifying fabricated audio, video, and images. The capacity to manipulate public perceptions during an already tense electoral period is therefore considerably greater than it was twenty years ago. The question is whether our preventive institutions have evolved at the same pace.
The events of August 2026 provide a particularly important reminder. On 16th August, violence erupted around a Linda Mwananchi political mobilization in Homa Bay. Human Rights Watch reported that hundreds of people armed with machetes, guns, and sticks attacked a convoy transporting supporters and politicians to a planned rally, with at least three people killed. Journalists covering the events were also attacked and robbed of their equipment. Witnesses reported that police officers were present but unable to contain the violence. The day before, police had reported intercepting people allegedly carrying crude weapons along the Kisumu–Kericho road. Such reports should raise difficult questions about what information was available to the authorities before the violence and, more importantly, whether that information was acted upon effectively.
The important point is not to rush to conclusions about who organized the violence or why. Those questions require credible investigation. The important point for prevention is that violence of this scale should trigger questions about organization, financing, mobilization, intelligence, policing, and accountability. It should also remind us that political violence does not simply happen. It often involves actors, resources, mobilization, and opportunities. The response, therefore, cannot be limited to condemning the violence after it occurs. It must include identifying those who organize and finance it, investigating allegations against them, disrupting the networks that facilitate violence, and ensuring that political and security actors who abuse their positions are held accountable.
On 13th September, a large Linda Mwananchi mobilization took place in Nairobi. The political environment was charged, security was heightened, and the mobilization attracted substantial crowds. Yet the event proceeded without the kind of violence witnessed in Homa Bay the previous month. Contemporary reporting described a peaceful procession through parts of the city, with police providing security and political leaders publicly acknowledging the officers’ conduct. That contrast matters. It demonstrates that mass political mobilization does not inevitably produce violence. Political competition does not inevitably produce violence. Even a highly charged political environment does not automatically become violent. This is precisely why the argument that electoral violence is spontaneous or unavoidable should be resisted.
To prevent a repeat of the 2007-2008 violence, a series of institutional reforms were set in motion, including the establishment of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), which launched the second edition of its Roadmap to a Violence-Free 2027 General Election and branded Uchaguzi Bila Noma campaign on 25th August 2026. The roadmap seeks to strengthen early-warning and response mechanisms, promote responsible political leadership, and improve collaboration among security agencies, electoral institutions, political actors, civil society, and communities. The proposed interventions include mapping conflict hotspots, deploying peace monitors, monitoring social media and public spaces, engaging young people, undertaking civic education, organizing peace caravans, and strengthening digital peacebuilding. The roadmap also proposes accountability mechanisms, including a peace accountability charter and initiatives intended to publicly recognize responsible leadership and expose those who contribute to violence. These are important measures, but early warning is only useful if it produces early action.
A hotspot map does not prevent violence by itself. A peace monitor cannot prevent an organized attack without the institutional authority and resources to trigger a response. Monitoring hate speech is of limited value if those responsible are not investigated. Civic education cannot compensate for political actors who knowingly mobilize violence. Security deployment cannot be considered preventive if the security response itself becomes excessive, partisan, or abusive. The real test, therefore, is not whether Kenya has plans. It is whether institutions will act on the information those plans generate. This is where Kenya’s history should make us particularly uncomfortable. Before 2007, there were reports of incitement, and there were known hotspots. There were individuals accused of organizing violence and warnings from civil society and election observers. Yet accountability was weak, and the consequences were severe. We should therefore be wary of creating another cycle in which institutions document warning signs, produce reports, hold conferences, and issue statements, only to respond to violence after it has occurred. Prevention requires more than peace messaging.
It requires political leaders to be held accountable for incitement. It requires investigators and prosecutors to pursue credible cases without political interference. It requires the police to protect political participation impartially and to exercise restraint while responding effectively to genuine threats. It requires the electoral commission to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process. It requires media actors to recognize their role in either escalating or reducing tensions. And it requires citizens to resist the normalization of political violence. Above all, it requires institutions to respond to warning signs before they become victims, bodies, displaced families, and destroyed property.
It is 2027. Looking back, will we have regrets, or will we be able to say that, this time, we did what we knew needed to be done? We will have known the hotspots, seen the patterns, heard the rhetoric, identified the vulnerabilities, and known the individuals and networks alleged to finance, organize, or facilitate violence. We will have had early-warning mechanisms, peace monitors, civil society organizations, electoral institutions, security agencies, and communities collecting information about emerging risks. The question will be whether we acted on that knowledge. Did we interrupt the patterns before they escalated? Did we hold those responsible to account? Did we protect citizens whose political participation placed them at risk? Did we ensure that the security response protected, rather than undermined, constitutional rights? Did we address the grievances that made communities vulnerable to mobilization? And did we preserve public confidence in the electoral process when the results were contested? When that moment comes, it should not be possible to say that we did not know, because we do know. The writing is on the wall. The question is whether we are paying attention.
The author is a program associate at Utu Wetu Trust