Maina Kiai

Education, career, and awards

Kiai’s most prominent human rights work began in 1992, when he co-founded the unofficial Kenya Human Rights Commission. He served as the Commission’s executive director until September 1998.

Kiai then moved on to become Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Program (1999-2001) and the Africa Director of the International Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights, 2001-2003) before finally serving as Chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission from 2003 to 2008.

From July 2010 to April 2011, Kiai was the Executive Director of the International Council on Human Rights Policy. He has also held research fellowships at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the TransAfrica Forum.

In addition to his work as UN Special Rapporteur, Kiai also currently serves as director of the local Kenyan NGO InformAction, which uses a multimedia approach – primarily video production – to help educate Kenyans about their human rights. He also writes a periodic column for the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest daily-circulation newspaper.

In 2014, Freedom House awarded Kiai its Freedom Award, an acknowledgment begun in 1943 "to extol recipients’ invaluable contribution to the cause of freedom and democracy." Prior Freedom Award honorees include Chen Guangcheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Medgar Evers, and Edward R. Murrow.

In October 2016, Kiai received the United Nations Foundation's Leo Nevas Award for his work as Special Rapporteur. The award recognizes "those who have served as agents of change in advancing international human rights." In December 2016, he was awarded the 2016 AFL-CIO George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award.

Kiai is a lawyer by profession, trained at Nairobi and Harvard Universities.

Work as Special Rapporteur

Maina Kiai took up his functions as the first UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association on May 1, 2011. As Special Rapporteur, he is independent from any Government or organization and serves in his individual capacity.

As of June 2016, Kiai has presented six reports to the Human Rights Council on the subjects of:

As of December 2016, Kiai has also presented four reports to the UN General Assembly, on the subjects of:

Kiai has also made eight official country visits, to Georgia (2012), the United Kingdom (2013 & 2016), Rwanda (Jan. 2014), Oman (Sept. 2014), Kazakhstan (Jan. 2015), Chile (Sept. 2015), the Republic of Korea (Jan. 2016) and the United States of America (July 2016).

As of June 2016, Kiai has issued more than 140 press statements via OHCHR and sent over 900 communications to UN member states.

Kiai conducted the first ever official country visit to the United States by a UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in July 2016.

Retribution for human rights work

Kiai has been subjected to threats and harassment for his human rights work.

Most recently, in September 2013, Kiai reported that “thugs” had come to his mother’s homestead in Nyeri and threatened to burn it down.

In 2008, Kiai was one among several human rights defenders who received death threats, as post-election violence raged in Kenya. A coalition of Kenyan civil society groups reported that they had become aware of a plot involving "a five- or- so man elite squad that has been tasked with the liquidation of, inter alia, Maina Kiai, Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights."