In July 2009, the ICC took up an investigation into the 2008 post-election crisis that killed at least 1,200 people, and displaced 600,000 others, after Kenya’s parliament refused on two separate occasions to set up a domestic tribunal. The investigation is based in part on evidence gathered by Kenyan Court of Appeal Judge Philip Waki and included the names of those Kenyan officials deemed to be “most responsible” for the violence. Six Kenyans were named by the ICC prosecutor, and charges against four of those Kenyans – former Higher Education Minister William Ruto, former Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, former civil service chief Francis Muthaura, and radio talk show host Joshua arap Sang – were confirmed on Jan. 23, 2012. Two of these men, Kenyatta and Ruto, have announced plans to run for president and all four are at liberty until a trial begins, likely later this year.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
