The Mt Kenya Times 
By Mr. Fredrick Kipchumba Chelimo PWD
Chairperson, Jiamini Disability network Community Based organization
Email: jiamini.network@gmail.com
In international diplomacy, treaties are the instruments through which sovereign states negotiate obligations, responsibilities, protections, and mutual interests. They are expected to pass through legal and legislative scrutiny, institutional oversight, public accountability and parliamentary ratification. They exist not only as diplomatic paperwork, but as safeguards against the concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals operating behind closed doors and whose decisions may not align with national interests. That is precisely why the ongoing controversy on the proposed United States Ebola quarantine facility in Laikipia Kenya has evolved into far more than a public health dispute.
The controversy erupted after it emerged that the United States government had secured approval to establish a quarantine and monitoring facility in Kenya for American citizens exposed to Ebola while operating in Central Africa. The facility reportedly situated in Laikipia Air Base and staffed by American medical personnel, was intended to receive potentially exposed Americans rather than transport them directly back to the United States. American officials arguing that the arrangement would shorten evacuation times and improve outbreak response capabilities closer to epidemic zone. While at the same time US Secretary of state Marco Rubio was quoted stating “we cannot and will not allow any case of Ebola to Enter the United States”
Technically, the proposal was presented as a public health measure while politically it detonated into one of the most sensitive debates Kenya has witnessed in recent times. Most Kenyan interpreted the proposal not as an act of partnership but as a startling display of geopolitical arrogance. The symbolism was impossible to ignore. The worlds most powerful nation, equipped with some of the most advanced infectious disease facilities and medical technologies ever developed, appeared unwilling to permit potentially exposed citizens onto its soil while simultaneously expecting an African nation with far fewer resources to absorb that risk. The Americal officials’ statement on the treatments of infectious diseases abroad and not domestically as the case has been previously points at a potential situation that is far from what we can see.
If the virus was potentially dangerous enough to warrant American citizens being excluded from their territory, many Kenyans asked, by what logic was it acceptable to Kenya?
Kenyans in their small or big ways including through civic organization led by Katiba Institute filed a constitutional petition seeking to halt the arrangement citing constitutional concerns, health agreements, biosafety approvals, public participation, fair administrative action and parliamentary oversight among others. The Law Society of Kenya also added its voice questioning legality, transparency and implications on biosafety and public health. These interventions secured a temporary reprieve, when the High Court of Kenya suspended the establishment, operationalization or facilitation of any Ebola-related quarantine, isolation or treatment facility connected to the United States or any foreign government pending full judicial review.
It also barred entry of any individual exposed to or infected with Ebola under the contested arrangement until the petition is heard and determined. This ruling transformed the matter from diplomatic to constitutional confrontation. While the courts battled out the matter which is at the intersection of public health, foreign policy, sovereignty, and national security, Kenya’s parliament has remained conspicuously absent from the center of national debate. Both houses have not demonstrated the level of urgency expected from institutions constitutionally mandated to oversee executive decisions affecting the Republic. No statement, no enquiry, no emergency debate matching the scale of public anxiety.
There are no visible efforts to explain, or oversight effort to interrogate the legal, diplomatic, and health implications of the proposed arrangement. The silence forms part of the controversy as many observers sees the legislatures inactiveness as a broader democratic problem emerging across many developing nations; erosion of parliamentary oversight in favour of executive centered diplomacy reducing oversight institutions to spectators rather than guardians of public interest.
When international treaties, strategic agreements and sensitive arrangement cease functioning as transparent state-to-state instruments and instead evolve into informal understandings negotiated by a handful of powerful actors, diplomacy itself begins losing institutional legitimacy. International law becomes weakened, democratic accountability deteriorates and citizens lose visibility into decisions that directly affect their security and sovereignty. Formal diplomacy risks degenerating into what critics have described as “gentleman’s agreements” – understandings negotiated among a small circle of executives, diplomats and foreign interests without meaningful public participation or visible transparent parliamentary scrutiny.
The Kenya medical community through the doctor’s union has strongly condemned the healthcare workers and citizens to avoidable risks. They have described the move as Kenya becoming a dumping ground for risks that the United States itself appears unwilling to handle. Their concerns lie in whether Kenya possesses sufficient high containment infrastructure, emergency response systems and institutional safeguards to absorb additional risks while struggling with health care resources constraints.
Several experts while questioning the approach by the US noted that United States possesses extensive previous experience in transportation and treatment of Ebola patience and its current refusal to do so has raised ethical questions about whether the political optics are increasingly overriding scientific confidence. Powerful nations inevitably influence international systems, however, when power overrides visible sensitivities to perceptions of equality and mutual respect, it risks generating resentment even among allies. The current Kenya -US relations on strategic cooperation has quickly misinterpreted as coercion in the absents of transparency and unequal negotiation.
Many African countries see a superpower drawing protective circles around itself while extending risks outwards. They see hierarchy of acceptable exposure, a world order where vulnerability is geographically outsourced and whether the perception is wrong or right, diplomacy functions as much through trust as through logistics. Once trust is lost, even technically rational policies become politically combustive.
The broader lesson emerging from the Kenyan controversy is not only about Ebola, but the future of international relations in a world where citizens are becoming increasingly aware, informed and resistant to decision made without their participation especially when it affects them significantly. It is also about sovereignty, parliamentary oversight role, and global cooperation with powerful states who appear unwilling to shoulder the same risks they ask others to bear.
As for now, the courts have intervened where parliament has hesitated, civil society has spoken where legislature have remained muted, doctors have raised alarm where official communication has appeared evasive. The unanswered question is whether Kenya’s elected representatives will eventually reclaim their constitutional voice.
“The greatest threat to sovereignty is not always foreign power. Sometimes it is the silence of the institutions entrusted to defend it while decisions of national consequence drift beyond public scrutiny and democratic control”
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