One after the other the women sat infront of the audience and TV cameras and told of their ordeal. Each story was as heart wrenching as the previous. The women told terrifying tales of how men in uniform broke into their homes, beat them and violated them.

For Rita the silence of the night brough relief from a whole day of shouts and gun shots.She had arrived from hospital and was resting when at around midnight she heard a knock at her door. It was police officers who said they were looking for young men who were hiding in her house.

The report by Waki Commission is unprecedented in many ways, in that for the first time in Kenyan history; sexual crimes have not only been acknowledged but also given the prominence that they deserve.

The report makes grave revelations regarding sexual crimes by indicating that they were “under-reported, under-investigated and insufficiently addressed.”

The return of Kenya’s post 2007 elections Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to areas that were affected by land grievances should not be promoted as a durable solution but rather as a temporary measure to be accompanied by clear efforts to resolve the underlying causes of displacements, London based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) warns.

In its recent humanitarian policy group brief, the institute recommends that if durable solutions are found, programmes must henceforth take account of those who were forced to move in earlier wave of displacement.