For years, leading searches for enforced disappeared people, helping to retrieve bodies and witnessing postmortem exercises on behalf of shaken families has been Hussein Khalid’s brand of activism.
From discovering and leading efforts to retrieve bodies in River Yala in 2021, in Tana River and Shakahola in 2023, to championing resistance to SGR monopoly over Mombasa truckers, Khalid’s decades of risky human rights defence finally got recognised when he was declared the human rights defender of the year.
He was given the award alongside Boniface Mwangi and Hanifa Safia.
Though the July Gen Z protests is the latest highlight of his activism work, Khalid has been consistent in human rights campaign, enduring multiple arrests and threats to his life, at some point having to flee to safe houses when he believed there were credible threats against him.
A lawyer by training, Khalid has been to the city mortuary countless times and accompanied countless families in getting the first sight on decomposing bodies.
“This work changes you after some point. You view human life differently. Seeing bodies countless times, especially when they are smelly and being cut to pieces to determine the cause of death, at first point you, is tough,” he told the Star.
But despite the threats to his life, the psychological impact and even the concern that his family has over him, Khalid is only getting started, he said.
“I have been in this game for close to 30 years embracing mourning families, harassed citizens and standing up to the powerful with no strings attached. It is an inborn passion. But we are now going continent wide,” he said.
Khalid is a former executive director of Haki Africa but now heads a pan-African lobby known as Vocal Africa. Defenders Coalition, the lobby championing the rights, safety and wellbeing of human rights defenders, awarded Khalid, Mwangi and Safia for their active roles in the Gen Z protest.
From articulating the issues that resonated with the public and fueled the protests, the trio is hailed for sustaining the push for finding the disappeared and releasing of the arrested.
Khalid and Mwangi witnessed the postmortem of most of the protesters felled by bullets and even attended their burials in various parts of the country to stand in solidarity with the families.
The award citation described Khalid as “a towering figure in Kenya’s human rights landscape [and who] has been a pivotal figure in the country’s post-independence journey, tirelessly advocating for the protection of rights and freedoms.”
“Despite facing intimidation and threats, he remains unwavering in his commitment to this cause,” it says.
For Mwangi who started his activism work after the 2007 post-poll chaos, the lobby credits him with activating the anti-Finance bill crusading that culminated in the storming of Parliament.
It says Mwangi has dedicated his life to serving the
cause of justice and that has come with “a heavy price
for his family who have faced harassment, [and] the
escalation of these hostilities has seen him threatened
with harm and or death by forces in government. Despite these challenges, he remains undeterred.”
