{"id":24908,"date":"2016-04-26T06:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T06:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/kenya-refuses-to-sign-east-africa-defence-pact\/"},"modified":"2016-04-26T06:36:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T06:36:21","slug":"kenya-refuses-to-sign-east-africa-defence-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/kenya-refuses-to-sign-east-africa-defence-pact\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya Refuses to Sign East Africa Defence Pact"},"content":{"rendered":"

{East Africa\u2019s efforts to jointly combat terrorism and strengthen military capabilities for conflict prevention and crisis management faced a huge blow over the weekend as Kenya refused to sign the Mutual Defence Pact.}<\/p>\n

During a Council of Ministers meeting held at Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort, Rwanda and Uganda expressed willingness to sign the defence protocol.<\/p>\n

However, it became clear that Kenya did not want to append its signature on the document.<\/p>\n

Rwanda\u2019s East Africa Affairs Valentine Rugwabiza told colleagues at the Summit that \u201cUganda and Rwanda are prepared to sign the protocol. But Kenya is not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

The matter was deferred to the next Northern Corridor Summit.<\/p>\n

Kenya did not give satisfactory reasons as to why it was uncomfortable signing the protocol. Some officials said the Attorney General needed to read through the documents.<\/p>\n

However, highly placed sources said Kenya was unhappy with Uganda choosing the southern route for the construction of the oil pipeline to the Tanzanian port of Tanga.<\/p>\n

\u201cKenyans are our brothers and sisters. But since we refused to allow the pipeline to pass through Kenya to Mombasa, their attitude has changed,\u201d said a source.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we expect them to understand our situation and respect our decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The East African economic powerhouse has in recent years faced huge terror attacks in which hundreds of innocent civilians have died.<\/p>\n

Kenya\u2019s refusal to sign the defence pact is likely to see military cooperation between regional countries backslide.<\/p>\n

In October last year, Kenya\u2019s President Uhuru Kenyatta, Rwanda\u2019s President Paul Kagame and Uganda\u2019s President Yoweri Museveni, assented to the defence protocol. This was after its ratification by all the partners.<\/p>\n

Under the agreement, armed forces of partner states cooperate in conducting maritime patrols to boost security for the region\u2019s international waters and fight piracy.<\/p>\n

The pact further empowers partners states to encounter threats against regional security with immediate collective action.<\/p>\n

In this case threats to national security, including armed attacks against a partner state shall be considered threats to regional security.<\/p>\n

For example, if a rebel movement attacked any of the countries, member states are expected to rally a joint force to counter the security threat.<\/p>\n

The three countries signed a common pact on the establishment of the Mutual Defence, Peace and Security Pact on January 8, 2014 in Kigali.<\/p>\n

Other objectives of the pact include peace support operations; prevention of genocide; disaster management and crisis response; management of refugees; control of proliferation of small arms and light weapons; and combating transnational and cross border crimes.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{East Africa\u2019s efforts to jointly combat terrorism and strengthen military capabilities for conflict prevention and crisis management faced a huge blow over the weekend as Kenya refused to sign the Mutual Defence Pact.} During a Council of Ministers meeting held at Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort, Rwanda and Uganda expressed willingness to sign the defence protocol. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[2600],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-chimp-reports"],"bylines":[{"id":2600,"name":"Chimp Reports","slug":"chimp-reports","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2600,"name":"Chimp Reports","slug":"chimp-reports","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24908"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24908"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}