Kenya’s move to deregister more than 500 nongovernmental organizations last week may have taken many from the international development community by surprise, but not organizations working on the ground.
These groups have been battling crippling measures against the NGO community that the government has been trying to introduce for more than a year now. The security bill President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law Friday is just the latest.
Under the new legislation, which officially is the government’s response to the Somali militant group al-Shabab’s increased attacks in Kenya’s northeastern region, authorities are given the power to classify civil society organizations — dubbed public benefit organizations in Kenya — “in the prescribed manner.”