In a Kenyan town bordering wildlife conservation land, two men try to hold onto their increasingly fragile status quo. A small-time ivory dealer fights to stay on top while forces mobilise to destroy his trade. When he turns to his younger cousin, a conflicted wildlife ranger who hasn’t been paid in months, they both see a possible lifeline.

The plummeting elephant population in Africa has captured the attention of the world. And as the government cracks down, the poachers face their own existential crisis. For them, conservationists are not only winning their campaign to value elephant life over its ivory, but over human life as well. Who are these hunters who will risk death, arrest and the moral outrage of the world to provide for their families?

Director Jon Kasbe followed the film’s subjects over a three-year period, gaining an extraordinary level of access and trust as he became part of their everyday lives. The result is a rare and visually arresting look through the perspectives and motives of the people at the epicentre of the conservation divide.

Run Time: 79 mins

Director and Producer: Jon Kasbe

Chair

Nick Clark is a broadcast journalist and writer specialising in environmental coverage. His latest work features an acclaimed documentary for Al Jazeera English on the remote Weddell Sea in Antarctica called ‘Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary’. In 2014 Nick completed a prestigious Fellowship at MIT and Harvard studying the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and marine eco-systems. Nick’s reported on the disappearance of the world’s tropical glaciers in the Andes and the devastation caused by illegal logging in Amazonia. He’s also focused on issues as diverse as efforts to save the Siberian Tiger in the forests of the Russian Far East, the shark fin trade from Hong Kong to the Middle East, the conflict between wolf and man in remote parts of Finland and the plight of gorillas in Uganda. Nick has travelled to the Arctic regions several times – most recently in August this year, to report for Al Jazeera English on the threat of a collapsing iceberg looming over an isolated village in northern Greenland. Nick’s won a Royal Television Society award for directing  & presenting a six part series on the River Thames. He’s also reported general news, taking in stints in Afghanistan, Libya – as Gadaffi’s regime fell – as well as many African assignments.

Speakers

Born to an Australian mother and an Indian father, Jon Kasbe spent most of his childhood traveling extensively. Growing up in this environment instilled in him a deep curiosity and desire to explore the world. He soon found documentary filmmaking to be a way to immerse himself in his travels and share discoveries with others. At age 10, he bought his first camera in order to interview children in war-torn Serbia, where his parents were volunteering. Now, at 27, his short films have screened around the world, garnering an Emmy Award, two Emmy nominations, and recognition from the Webbys, SXSW, Hot Docs, Vimeo Staff Picks, and The White House News Photographers Association. WHEN LAMBS BECOME LIONS, which he filmed, directed and produced, is his feature-length film debut.

Kaddu Sebunya is president of the African Wildlife Foundation. He began his career serving as a project manager with WaterAid and as a relief program officer with Oxfam UK. Beginning with his post as the Associate Director for the United States Peace Corps in Uganda, Sebunya’s career began to focus more on conservation. He later served as a country program coordinator with the World Conservation Union—now the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN—and as a senior policy and planning advisor for Conservation International.

Godfrey Mwampembwa, is a renowned political cartoonist. Originally from Tanzania, Gado has lived and worked as an editorial cartoonist in Kenya for many years, and currently works for The East African Standard in Nairobi. His cartoons have also been published in Daily Nation (Kenya), Le Monde and Courrier International (France), Deutsc he Welle (Germany), and The Guardian (UK) among others. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Buni Media, an independent multi-media company based in Nairobi, where he produces the weekly satirical puppet show, The XYZ SHOW. Gado is a recipient of many awards including the Kenya National Human Rights Commission Award in Journalism in 2005 and 2007 and the prestigious Cartoon for Peace 2016 International Editorial Cartoon award. In 2011 Gado was among 12 extraordinary leaders to receive a Visionaries Award from Ford Foundation for their innovative efforts on the frontlines of key social issues. In 2014, Gado was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Africa by the New African.

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy and International Development at the University of Birmingham. In addition to numerous book chapters, he is the author of Democracy in Africa: Successes, failures and the struggle for political reform (CUP, 2015) and over twenty journal articles including “Rethinking the ‘presidentialism debate’: Conceptualizing coalitional politics in cross-regional perspective” (Democratization, 2014), which won the inaugural GIGA prize for the best article published in Comparative Area Studies. Professor Cheeseman is also the editor of the collections Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya Since 1950 (2010), The Handbook of African Politics (2013), and African Politics: Major Works (2016), and two special issues of the Journal of Eastern African Studies on the Kenyan elections of 2007 and 2013. As well as being the former editor of the journal African Affairs, the #1 ranked journal in Area Studies, Professor Cheeseman is the founding editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics, the Oxford Dictionary of African Politics, and the co-editor of the Handbook of Kenyan Politics (forthcoming). These days, he spends much of his time writing about contemporary events in Africa in a bi-weekly column for Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

On Tuesday 10 November the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of Julia Dahr’s Kisilu: The Climate Diaries, ahead of the film’s December screening at the UN climate change conference in Paris. The screening was followed by a discussion with the film’s producer, Hugh Hartford.

The documentary, produced for Al Jazeera, focuses on the eponymous farmer from southeast Kenya and his first hand experiences of the effects of climate change, as he captures much of the footage himself.

Kisilu Musya shows us how his house is destroyed by savage winds and how his crops are first parched and then flooded. In Musya’s words, the extremes that climate change brings mean “everything is being contradicted.”

Throughout the filming period, Musya helped both himself and his community by beginning a village-wide movement to improve the quality of the soil by planting trees.

Yet the documentary is not solely focused on the environment. Hartford said: “If we made it too much about the trees, it would take over the story.” As the film progressed “the trees got surpassed by his relationship with his wife,” said Hartford. “It’s much more of a personal story.”

The producer was clear about the fact that the film provides no grand solutions to the environment crises.  Instead, in the film, “what we’re witnessing is a person becoming a leader,” said Hartford.

The film begins not with a description of the global problem, but with a depiction of Musya’s family life and the nine children he supports.

One audience member said that they felt the introduction of the subject of climate change was sudden, to which Hartford replied: “Delaying the mention of climate change is actually deliberate.”

He underlined the idea that although the film is about Kenya’s environmental problems, Kisilu’s life and personality formed the central narrative.

Great film tonight @frontlineclub by @JuliaDahr about #Kisilu – fighting #climatechange in #Kenya. Catch it on @AJWitness 7 December.

— Louise Orton (@louloulorton) November 10, 2015

Another audience member congratulated Dahr’s distinct approach to such a large problem that is difficult to understand. He said she was the only director who had the “creativity to get out of the non-government organisation straightjacket, as it were, and do bigger films.”

Hartford concurred, and commented on the fact that the film’s special quality comes in part from the fact that the viewer cannot always tell who is behind the camera.

Although Kisilu is a useful tool for climate change activists, “we’re not making a campaign film,” he said.

Another audience member raised the question of how foreign filmmakers manage to tell the Kenyan story without being personally involved, Hartford replied that there was “an interesting dynamic between the crew and the family,” but that was “never a reason not to do something.” The relationships between crew and Musya would endure, Hartford said.

This sentiment of collaboration is expressed in the film. As Musya filmed insects working in teams, he contemplated human inaction in the face of climate devastation. Musya said that insects, “have power in coming together… I wonder why human beings are not doing it.”

Meet Kisilu Musya, a Kenyan farmer and father of eight children, living at the front line of our changing climate. Through Kisilu’s poignant video diary and director Julia Dahr’s observational footage, we follow Kisilu and the Musya family through their day-to-day life over three years. We experience their struggle against the extreme storms and increasing droughts that threaten to destroy their home and ruin the crops that provide their food.

This personalised narrative documents a grassroots environmental awareness movement, as Kisilu determines to inform his community of tactics to help prepare their homes and crops for extreme weather.

Kisilu is an intimate portrait of a tightly knit family and one innovative and impassioned man battling the impacts of climate change to create a better future for his local community.

Kisilu: The Climate Diaries was awarded the Student Award at the 2015 One World Media Awards and will be broadcast on Al Jazeera Witness on 2 December 2015.

Director: Julia Dahr
Production Company: Banyak Films
Producer: Hugh Hartford
Runtime: 60′
Year: 2015
Country: Norway

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Chip Duncan, protagonist Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, photojournalist/producer Patrick Muiruri and photojournalist/producer Salim Amin. Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.

The Sound Man tells the story of Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, a 62-year-old professional soundman who has lived in Nairobi’s Kibera slum since he was born. For the past 35 years, Abdul has worked side-by-side with the best photojournalists from Kenya, recording sound for news reports featuring crisis, war, famine and genocide.

The Sound Man uses extraordinary archival footage from Nairobi-based production company Camerapix to tell Abdul‘s gripping story – a story that explores the risks to frontline journalists and includes coverage of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, the civil war in Sudan, the revolution in Ethiopia and post-election tribal conflicts in Kenya.

Abdul was also an eyewitness to the genocide in Rwanda, having spent spent weeks working from the so-called “Hotel Rwanda”, and his firsthand recollection of the genocide provides extraordinary insight into the human condition.

The Sound Man was written, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist Chip Duncan.

Director/Producer: Chip Duncan
Year: 2015
Runtime: 27′
www.duncanentertainment.com/soundman.php

A week after the climax of the 3-day terrorist attack which started on 21 September at the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 2 October 2013 – chaired by BBC Africa Editor Solomon Mugera –  gathered to discuss the Kenyan government’s response to the event and how the once regional group al-Shabaab has grown into an international concern.

Solomon Mugera (right) chairs the panel including Mary Harper (left) discussing the Westgate mall attack

Mary Harper, Africa Editor at the BBC World Service, started off by asking the panel what their initial reaction to the attack was.

Hamza Mohamed, an idependant British-Somali journalist based in Mogadishu, Somalia and currently working for Al Jazeera English said:

“I wasn’t surprised…most of us who have been to that shopping mall [will understand], it was a matter of time… First, the security that was outside the shopping mall; you wouldn’t find that [lack of] in West End clubs to be very honest with you.”

Mugera was boarding a plane to Nairobi just as the attack started and as soon as he disembarked in the city he could sense the atmosphere:

“You could tell this was something serious. Kenya has suffered a number of terror attacks [in 1980, 1998, 2002] and now you’ve got this one. But these are not the only terror attacks on Kenya, you’ve had so many incursions into that country… grenades, insurgents coming in and terrorising police. So it’s not [uncommon], coming at this time [though] why Kenya? Is Kenya such a soft target?”

Kenya has been a target for attack from al-Shabaab since it pushed the terrorist group out of the capital Mogadishu and the highly profitable port of Kismayo, during Kenya’s invasion of Somalia in August 2011 and September 2012.

Packed out room for tonight's debate on the #westgate attack with @hamza_africa @jamalmosman @mary_harper @smugera pic.twitter.com/Jcrv8e969C

— Millicent (@MillyTeasdale) October 2, 2013

Harper asked whether the Westgate mall attack was punishment for the Kenyan invasion but also about telling the world ‘we’re here’:

“It couldn’t have chosen a more spectacular target to get top media coverage in the country, which is the media hub for East Africa for all the international media outlets. And the way that it managed its information campaign was highly sophisticated… the Westgate attack was not just about punishing Kenya, but also about telling the world ‘we’re here’ and a way of becoming a global brand.”

Ben Rawlence, who is an Open Society Fellow working on a book about the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya, said that the Kenyan government’s reaction has been direct consequence of the lessons they’ve learned during the invasion of Somalia:

“…Some of Kenya’s traditional knee-jerk discrimination and racial profiling of Somali’s has diminished in the last couple of years and I think that’s a direct consequence of the invasion of Somalia… It’s actually had to work much harder with the refugees, with the Somali community.

“If there hadn’t been an invasion, now there would be one. But because we’ve had the invasion, some of those lessons have been learned – which is why it’s been perhaps a cooler response.”

To address the problem of al-Shabaab further the panel delved into why they are so popular and what support they have within Somalia.

Jamal Osman, an award-winning journalist and filmmaker working with ITN and Channel 4 News said:

“Initially it was more nationalist; a lot of youngsters joined al-Shabaab when the Ethiopians invaded Somalia. And then later a lot joined for ideological reasons.

“They are very popular in the areas they control because they bring security, stability, law and order. And if you ask an average Somali in those areas, that’s what they care most about – they want to feel safe.”

https://twitter.com/Payitforward87/status/385497557515776000

Harper added:

“If you watch their propaganda videos and rap songs, they’re so slick and sophisticated and their use of social media is so impressive that you can understand that any bored young person living anywhere in the world… who has an interest or propensity to some kind of rebellion, that is something that would appeal to them… They really have most effective, attractive [ways] – it’s a horrible word to say about a group that can do the sort of thing that happened in Westgate.”

Mugera emphaised that this is no longer solely a Kenyan or East African problem:

“Al-Shabaab is no longer a Somalian militant group – that’s why you are hearing mentions of people from Norway, nationals of America, nationals of Britain… If it’s recruiting people… it’s receiving funding from these countries and therefore that internationalises al-Shabaab and this has got to raise concern by people beyond Kenya… Somalia…Uganda.”

“…You saw some of the people killed in that attack, we had Koreans in there, somebody from Peru. It begins to show you just how globalised a terror organisation can be.”

Watch the full discussion below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-kenyas-fight

On 21 September Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab launched a devastating attack on a shopping centre in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The confirmed death toll after the three-day siege is 61 civilians, six security officers and five militants, 61 people are still believed to be missing.

Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta has reacted by saying: “We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get them. We shall punish them for this heinous crime.”

For October’s First Wednesday we will be joined by a panel of experts and journalists to discuss how the Kenyan government will respond and what the implications will be for the region. We will be examining the threat posed by al-Shabaab in the neighbouring countries and further afield, and exploring their origins and motivations.

Chaired by BBC Africa Editor, Solomon Mugera.

The panel:

Mary Harper is the Africa Editor at the BBC World Service and author of Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State. She has reported on Africa for the past 20 years, and has a special interest in Somalia. She reports frequently from the country, covering conflict, piracy, Islamism and other subjects.

Hamza Mohamed is an independent British-Somali journalist who has been based in Mogadishu, Somalia for the past year and a half. He is currently working with Al Jazeera English and was previously a BBC journalist.

Jamal Osman is a multi-award winning journalist and filmmaker specialising sub-Saharan Africa. He has been working with ITN/Channel 4 News since 2008.

Ben Rawlence is an Open Society Fellow working on a book about the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya. Previously he was a senior researcher on the Horn of Africa for Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War.

On Monday 15th April, the Dutch Embassy and Time magazine partnered to co-organise a screening at the Frontline Club of Peace vs Justice: a documentary about the violence of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), particularly against children, in northern Uganda. An expert panel discussion followed.

Klaartje Quirijns (left), Geoffrey Robertson (centre left), Matthew McAllester (centre right), Mugambi Kiai (right)       Photo: Jim Treadway

Directed by Klaartje Quirijns, Peace vs. Justice explores how to find justice for Kony, and peace for Uganda, where three million people have been victimized by the LRA, either directly or indirectly, according to the film’s closing credits.

If Kony is captured  (one hundred U.S. Special Operations troops were dispatched toward this end in Central Africa last year ), the film asks: should his crimes be placed solely into the hands of local justice in Uganda?  “The people I met in northern Uganda…actually most people…will say that,” Quirijns told the audience.

The movie highlights however that Ugandans have failed to achieve peace with the LRA for over two decades.

Many hope to see Kony tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands, yet panelist and British barrister Courtenay Griffiths was sceptical:

“If you look at virtually every situation in which the ICC are involved, you can see certain Western interests at play. And what you have to realize is that the language of human rights, and humanitarian intervention, has now become a fig leaf behind which powerful Western countries can intervene around the world to protect their own, particularly economic, interests.”

Courtney Griffiths (left), Barney Afako (centre), Klaartje Quirijns (right) Photo: Jim Treadway

Was Griffiths right to doubt the ICC’s intentions? asked moderator Matthew McAllester.

“No,” human rights lawyer and fellow panelist Geoffrey Robertson affirmed. The ICC has brought both hope and fear that war crimes will not be tolerated, he emphasized.

“You can’t say it’s a neocolonial court,” he added.  “Yes, we won’t probably get [Tony] Blair.  Although Dr. Kissinger’s travel plans are very curtailed. So are George Bush’s. There are a lot of places they can’t go to. Why? Because of international justice.”

Finally, Mugambi Kiai, a professional advocate for accountability in African governance, demanded a change in the conversation about Kony, Uganda, and the ICC:

“When is it that we stop looking at the ICC as a panacea? As the vehicle through which we get justice? …  Where are the domestic remedies that we so need? [In Kenya,] we’ve been told: we’ve got a new judiciary, we’ve got a new constitution. That’s all hogwash!

They’re not doing enough to transform the political conversation that transforms all of these historical injustices into good governance, into a political method that respects rights, respects values, respects dignity. That is not the conversation that’s going on, and that’s a tragedy.”

 

You can watch the discussion below:

Panelists debate the implications of Kenya’s recent election results.

The event on the 11 March at the Frontline Club was a panel debate analysing the previous week’s much anticipated election results in Kenya. The panel, chaired by Audrey Brown, producer and presenter on BBC Focus on Africa and Network Africa, examined the implications of Uhuru Kenyatta election as Kenya’s new President, despite being wanted by the International Criminal Court. Kenya’s past and future played a central part in the evening as panelists and audience decoded the recent election results under the shadow of its 2007 post-election violence, and asked ‘what is going to happen next?’

The evening began with a stern warning from panelist Mathias Muindi, currently editor with the BBC Monitoring office in Nairobi.

“The Kenyan story has just begun…it is one which continues to confound…one of my biggest fears is that the war has just been postponed to another time.”

Echoing this caution, panelist Daniel Branch, associate professor of African history at the University of Warwick, commented on the narrative emerging around the recent election process:

“On the one hand I breathed a huge sigh of relief this week that things didn’t go badly. On the other hand I think there has been an excessive haste to declare the election a good process and to ignore significant problems with Kenya’s institutions.”

Natznet Tesfay head of Africa Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis Ltd, expanded on this point, arguing that the reaction of the judiciary would be pivotal.

“One important institution which will truly tested over the coming weeks is the judiciary, specifically the supreme court. You have now had judicial reform and you’ve also had policies whereby you can file a petition within seven days of the announced results. The panel has unanimously agreed that it is likely to be done by Raila Odinga and possibly other candidates. Now this is likely to be a true test of where the government is going and to see whether the judiciary has matured enough to make this decision. However, the ICC will still be the biggest aggravator in the situation going forward.”

The panel agreed that beneath the legalities of the recent election lay more fundamental problems with serious implications for Kenya’s future.

“What Kenyans have elected is a divided central government”, Branch argued. “They don’t agree on the most fundamental issue to Kenya which is devolution. It is very easy to see an argument coming up about distribution of resources, about oil and gas, and about major development projects. The question is, who is going to reap the rewards? This really gets to the heart of what politics in this country is going to be like when you take the ICC out of the picture.”

The evening concluded with a question from the audience about whether there was space for hope in Kenya’s future. Branch cited the importance of the fundamental, and growing, problem of inequality in the country’s future. Muindi and Tesfay took a more positive line, with the latter citing the growth of internet penetration, a youthful population and a synergy coming from the ground up as serious basis for optimism.

Watch the full debate here:

Monday 4 March

Monday will see the long-awaited opening of the Al Sweady inquiry, examining the circumstances surrounding a 2002 incident in Maysan province, Iraq, involving British security forces. Following a firefight on 14 May at a vehicle checkpoint known as Danny Boy, a number of Iraqis were taken to UK detention facility, Camp Abu Naji. There is a dispute over how many Iraqis were killed in the firefight, but the following day the British soldiers returned 20 bodies to the Iraqi authorities. There are accusations that several of the Iraqis may have died while in custody.

Meanwhile, eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday, with a bailout package for Cyprus high on the agenda now that elections there have been completed. The politics of a financial aid package are complicated by the fact that Cyprus is home to significant amount of Russian money, which many suspect is being laundered on the island.

Finally Monday, the posthumous trial of whistleblowing lawyer Sergey Magnitsky on tax evasion charges is scheduled to resume. Magnitsky died aged 37 in prison in November 2009 as he awaited trial. Critics suggest the charges were trumped up in retaliation for Magnitsky’s role in exposing an alleged $230m fraud that was linked to a Russian Interior Ministry official.

Tuesday 5  March

On Tuesday, the once-a-decade political transition that will see Xi Jinping formally appointed China’s President will reach its final stage when a two-week session of the National People’s Congress opens in Beijing.

Lastly, elections are scheduled to take place in the Federated States of Micronesia. Refreshingly, all candidates are non-partisan, since the country has no formal political parties.

Wednesday 6  March

On Wednesday, in Brasilia four of Brazil’s five main unions are scheduled to start a march to protest sluggish growth and to call for labour market reforms.

In Cairo, the once-high-profile trial of NGO workers charged with working for “illegal” civil society organisations will continue. The case disappeared from mainstream coverage once the 19 American citizens accused in the case were allowed to return to the US last March.

Finally, Israeli President Shimon Peres will be in Brussels on Wednesday, where he will meet with Herman Van Rompuy.

Thursday 7 March

On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague will host a Friends of Yemen meeting in London co-chaired by representatives from the Yemeni and Saudi governments. Other members of the grouping include Gulf Co-operation Council, G8 member states, the UN, EU, Arab League, IMF and the World Bank.

In finance, both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are scheduled to announce interest rate decisions.

Finally, in Brussels, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are scheduled to speak at a conference on the future of Europe, titled Europe 2020.

Friday 8 March

Following his 9 January sentencing, jailed businessman Christopher Tappin is due to begin serving a 33-month sentence relating to the sale of batteries used in Iranian missiles. He entered a guilty plea on 1 November 2012 to one count of aiding and abetting the illegal export of defence articles. Tappin may be allowed to serve his sentence in the UK; however a final ruling from the US Bureau of Prisons remains pending.

Lastly. the US will on Friday release its latest monthly unemployment figures, provoking the usual blame-game between Democrats and Republicans.

Weekend

On Saturday, nine policemen, including the former head of Port Said Security Directorate General Essam Samak, are among the remaining 54 defendants due to be sentenced over the 1 February violence at a match between Al Masry and Al Ahly football teams, which saw 74 Al Ahly supporters killed. The civilian defendants face charges of premeditated murder, while the police face charges of aiding the attackers. On 26 January, the court handed down 21 death sentences in connection to the incident, sparking widespread violence.

Finally, Sunday is the deadline for US special forces to leave Wardak province following President Hamid Karzai’s announcement on 24 February that they must leave over allegations of torture and murder. Previous such deadlines issued by Karzai have subsequently been revised.

Images Courtesy of Featureflash / ID1974 / Shutterstock.com