Thursday, November 8, 2018

Rehabilitating Former Terrorists in Kenya

The Center for Strategic and International Studies published on 26 October 2018 a commentary titled "Kenya's Struggling Amnesty Experiment: The Policy Challenge of Rehabilitating Former Terrorists" by Richard Downie.


Kenya announced in 2015 an amnesty program for young Kenyans who had gone to neighboring Somalia to train with the terrorist group, al-Shabaab. As many as 1,500 former al-Shabaab members surrendered to Kenyan authorities by February 2016. More than three years later, however, little is heard about the amnesty program. The author identifies several reasons for the apparent failure of the program.