'Not men enough to rule!': politicization of ethnicities and forcible circumcision of Luo men during the postelection violence in Kenya

BACKGROUND

As a contribution to ongoing research addressing sexual violence in war and conflict situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Rwanda, this paper argues that the way sexual violence intersects with other markers of identity, including ethnicity and class, is not clearly articulated. Male circumcision has been popularized, as a public health strategy for prevention of HIV transmission, although evidence of its efficacy is disputable and insufficient attention has been given to the social and cultural implications of male circumcision.

METHODS

This paper draws from media reporting and the material supporting the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court case against four Kenyans accused of crimes against humanity, to explore the postelection violence, especially forcible male circumcision.

RESULTS

During the postelection violence in Kenya, women were, as in other conflict situations, raped. In addition, men largely from the Luo ethnic group were forcibly circumcised. Male circumcision among the Gikuyu people is a rite of passage, but when forced upon the Luo men, it was also associated with cases of castration and other forms of genital mutilation. The aim appears to have been to humiliate and terrorize not just the individual men, but their entire communities. The paper examines male circumcision and questions why a ritual that has marked a life-course transition for inculcating ethical analysis of the self and others, became a tool of violence against men from an ethnic group where male circumcision is not a cultural practice.

CONCLUSION

The paper then reviews the persistence and change in the ritual and more specifically, how male circumcision has become, not just a sexual health risk, but, contrary to the emerging health discourse and more significantly, a politicized ethnic tool and a status symbol among the Gikuyu elite. In the view of the way male circumcision was perpetrated in Kenya, we argue it should be considered as sexual violence, with far-reaching consequences for men's physical and mental health.

[Emergencies and humanitarian aid in cases of armed conflict]

The Libyan revolution which began in February 2011 caused a massive influx of refugees of different nationalities into Tunisia. A refugee camp was gradually set up by the Tunisian authorities in collaboration with civil society and international humanitarian organisations. The refugees' health care and emergency treatment became a necessity.

The right to practice medicine without repercussions: ethical issues in times of political strife

This commentary examines the incursion on the neutrality of medical personnel now taking place as part of the human rights crises in Bahrain and Syria, and the ethical dilemmas which these incursions place not only in front of physicians practicing in those nations, but in front of the international community as a whole.In Bahrain, physicians have recently received harsh prison terms, apparently for treating demonstrators who clashed with government forces. In Syria, physicians are under the same political pressure to avoid treating political demonstrators or to act as informants against their own patients, turning them in to government authorities. This pressure has been severe, to the point that some physicians have become complicit in the abuse of patients who were also political demonstrators.This paper posits that physicians in certain countries in the Middle East during the "Arab Spring," specifically Syria and Bahrain, are being used as both political pawns and political weapons in clear violation of Geneva Convention and World Medical Association guidelines, and that this puts them into the most extreme sort of "dual loyalty" dilemma. They are being forced to choose between their own safety and well-being and that of their patients - a negative sum scenario wherein there is no optimal choice. As such, an international call for a United Nations inquiry must be made in order to protect the neutrality of medical care and personnel during times of armed conflict.

Dissenting families and social movement abeyance: the transmission of neo-fascist frames in postwar Italy

What explains the re-emergence of social movements after abeyance? Based on interviews with activists who belonged to the Italian neo-fascist movement of the late 1960s to early 1980s, this article documents the preservation of a neo-fascist mobilization potential after 1945 through the parent-child transmission of frames. This process involved learning through talk, action and text. Both the nature of family frames and their congruence with movement frames depended on whether parents were right-wing or non-partisan. Research on abeyance should include the family among institutions that uphold continuity between waves of contention in pluralist regimes.