The Kenya Defence Forces are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. The Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force comprise the national Defence Forces. The current Kenya Defence Forces were established, and its composition laid out, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya. The President of Kenya is the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces.
The military enjoys, in general, a good reputation. It is regularly deployed in peace-keeping missions around the world and generally commended for its professionalism. Further, in the aftermath of the national elections of December 2007 and the violence that subsequently engulfed the country, a commission of inquiry, the Waki Commission, commended its readiness and adjudged it to "have performed its duty well." Nevertheless there have been serious allegations of human rights violations, most recently while conducting counter-insurgency operations in the Mt Elgon area and also in the district of Mandera central.
Kenya’s military, like many government institutions in the country, has been tainted by corruption allegations. Because the operations of the military have been traditionally cloaked by the ubiquitous blanket of “state security”, the corruption has been less in public view, and thus less subject to public scrutiny and notoriety. This has changed recently. In what are by Kenyan standards unprecedented revelations, in 2010, credible claims of corruption were made with regard to recruitment and procurement of Armoured Personnel Carriers. Further, the wisdom and prudence of certain decisions of procurement have been publicly questioned.
Read more about Kenya Defence Forces: Kenya Army
Famous quotes containing the words defence and/or forces:
“To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defence against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering.... Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.”
—Cesare Pavese (1908–1950)
“There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)