 Thank you very much for the introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, the afternoon shift is often known as the graveyard shift because there's always a risk that you're speaking to a people who are perhaps asleep. And I want to reassure all of you that I can see you from here. So if there's anyone who is asleep, please wake up. I promise to keep this short and sweet. And I promise that I'll try and attempt to be not so depressing as my colleagues from the Philippines and Venezuela have been, but just to be able to demonstrate to you in the next seven minutes something different, a narrative that is being used in the East Africa community and particularly in Kenya when it comes to the shrinking space of civil society. In the next few minutes, what I'll try to do is just create for you a landscape of what has been happening and examining what we've been doing between 2014 and 2018 in terms of the space that we have a civil society and what has been going on in Kenya. In doing so, I want to be able to just demonstrate to you the levels of arbitrariness that has been exercised by our government in an attempt to control civil society organizations. I'll also try and just demonstrate to you some of the blatant disrespect by the executive of court orders that we've had. And finally, I'll be able to just show you how the law has been used in some instances as a tool for repression and an attempt to actually curtail the space of civil society. Doing so, I will be able to just give and demonstrate using five case studies. One, on the use of deregistration as a tool to intimidate civil society. Number two, refusal to register civil societies and as an alternative when deregistration doesn't work. Number three, intimidation and raids which has become a popular tool of use by the government and our Kenya Revenue Authority. Number four, the failure to operationalize laws that could be supportive of civil society organizations. And lastly, a practice that we have started adopting from other countries, which is to shift the location of the docket of civil society organizations from the Ministry of Planning to the Ministry of Interior and Security. Lastly, I'll try and just make a few recommendations on the way forward. Ladies and gentlemen, in December 2014, the NGO Coordination Board in Kenya deregistered 510 non-governmental organizations. In October 2015, the same NGO Coordination Board put on a lot 957 NGO organizations with a threat that the 957 organizations would be deregistered. Now the common threat and the common reasons that were always propelled by the NGO Coordination Board for Deregistration was that one, that these NGOs were carrying out terrorism activities. Number two, that these NGOs had failed to comply in terms of tax compliance and number three, that there was misappropriation of funds in these NGOs. Key among the NGOs that were in this list of NGOs that were going to be deregistered was APHRC. Many of you may know APHRC, the African Population Research Center that works on a lot of research on HIV. We had organizations such as the Kenya Human Rights Commission. We had organizations such as the Bah Hostess Empowerment Program. We had LVCT, which works on HIV interventions. Some of these organizations were then proceeded to be deregistered and some of them attempted and fought back the deregistration. Now one of the things that happens when you have an attempt to deregister is that you spend as an NGO a lot of your time, a lot of your resources trying to fight deregistration instead of fighting the meaningful interventions that you're supposed to be making. A second attempt that has been done by our NGO Coordination Board when deregistration has not been effective is to refuse to register NGOs that are coming up. In March 2013, the NGO Coordination Board which has the mandate to register NGOs refused to register the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Its reason, number one, that the name was unacceptable. Number two, that same sex relations in Kenya are criminalized and therefore they were not going to register an organization that was going to go against the culture of Kenyans, against the morals of Kenyans. Luckily, they did not know who they were fighting and Eric Gitari who was executive and still is the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission took this matter to court and challenged the actions of the NGO Coordination Board by indicating that this is a freedom of association which is enshrined in our constitution. And in so doing, the High Court of Kenya supported and I think we deserve to give the High Court of Kenya clap. The High Court of Kenya actually reversed the decision of the NGO Board and in a three judge panel composed of justice, a Mumbai Googie justice, Jojo Dunga and Justice Isaac Lenaula ruled that the NGO Board's decision was a violation of the constitutional provisions that we have towards freedom of association. And again, this was the second time that the High Court was doing that because initially, yet again in 2014, the NGO Coordination Board had also refused to register the transgender association known as transgender education and advocacy organization. The third attempt where the registration fails, where registration fails is to raid the organizations. And this is a particular popular practice that has come up particularly when we are in election mode in Kenya. And what happens is that we have seen the NGO Coordination Board come up with a trend whereby they start identifying and saying that organizations are not registered, they're not complying in terms of taxes and thereafter they raid these organizations. This is meant to pull down the morale of the people and this for instance, what is demonstrated on the picture was an attempt in August 2017 to raid one of the centers that works on elections, good governance in Kenya, known as Afrikog. And this for those of you who may have followed a little bit what was happening in Kenya in August 2017, this was slightly immediately after our elections whereby a few civil society organizations were attempting to think, should we go and petition the High Court as to the irregularities we had seen in our elections? So this is the third attempt and this has not just happened to one NGO but has also happened to organizations such as Haki, Africa, Muhuri, and any other civil society organization that works on human rights organizations that question and document violations of human rights organizations that question elections and election petitions. The fourth attempt and the fourth strategy that we have seen when it comes to the shrinking space of civil society in Kenya is to refuse to operationalize good laws. In 2013, we enacted, the Parliament of Kenya enacted the PBO Act and this is one of the progressive laws that seeks to provide for a more enabling environment for NGOs to work, to provide for clear guidelines when it comes to registration of NGOs. It was passed in 2012 and subsequently signed into law by our then president, Moa Kibaki, but what then happened is that it had a provision that indicated that it must be gazetted for it to come into operation. The government refused to operationalize it and what in fact happened is that we saw the government trying to sneak in amendments to that PBO Act. In the same year, October 2013, after the PBO Act was passed, that is the public benefits organizations Act was passed, the government through the National Assembly attempted to claw back on the gains that had been made. How so? Number one, they introduced what was known as a statute law miscellaneous amendment bill and in it, they tried to do the following. Number one, to curtail how much NGOs would receive to only 15% from external donors. We know and I mean this is general knowledge that our government does not fund these activities, it doesn't fund the activities that a lot of NGOs do and therefore what they were trying to do is curtail the activities that NGOs do. The second thing that the amendments were trying to prohibit was that civil society organizations should not receive money directly from donors. So they wanted to actually come in and set up something they were calling a public benefits organization federation through which all money that would be sent by donors would come in and then thereafter they would be the ones to redistribute the money. See, such genius, right? Our government is a genius, so this is what they were trying to do. Come up with this federation where all the money is pulled into one pool and then thereafter be the ones to redistribute. And thirdly, they wanted to alter the composition of the regulatory authorities such that it would be very executive heavy and give the authority a lot of discretionary powers which would mean that they could strike off organizations that were not morally upright or religiously correct. Luckily, what happened is that we had a strong civil society organization and we had a pushback. Now what happened is that in December 2013, these amendments were withdrawn. How so? What happened is that between introduction of these amendments in 2013 and December 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on the defense of human right defenders spoke against these amendments. The UN Special Rapporteur who then was a Kenyan on, UN Special Rapporteur on peaceful, I'm trying to remember the correct name, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association who was a Kenyan at that time in 2013, Minor Kei, also spoke against this act. The African Commission on Human and People's Rights, in fact, in the same year spoke against this bill and what happened is that we had a lot of pressure from outside bodies coming in and therefore the amendments were withdrawn. The last point that has been an increasing worrisome activity in Kenya has been a shift from the body that regulates civil society organizations because for the longest time NGOs were regulated by the Ministry of Planning and Devolution. However, in October 2017, we saw a shift whereby the president now gave a directive for the Ministry of Interior to be the one that will be regulating NGOs. This is a practice that perhaps I can say was inspired by only one country that I am aware of, Pakistan, that had in June 2015 previously done the same thing, moving civil society regulation to the docket of interior and security. The question then becomes, are civil society is a threat for us to be moved to the docket of interior? What happened in Kenya is that if you look at the dates, this was slightly before we went into our elections and increasingly we get worried as to what other directives will be given when it comes to civil society. How then do we safeguard this space that we have? Number one, we have increasingly learned that one of the ways to beat these systems is to comply, meaning that if you want to make the systems frustrated, make sure that you have complied with everything, including giving your employees their 21 days leave and their maternity leave so that they don't get the employment cuts against you. Make sure that you file your tax returns, make sure that you have your National Hospital Insurance Fund in order. Everything in order. Make sure your paperwork is in order because that way you make it extra hard for them to come to you and say you're not complying with your taxes. Secondly, is that we have seen a judiciary that is more open in Kenya and able to interpret the constitution and safeguard some of our spaces using litigation. We have seen civil society organizations, we have seen members of the LGBT community going to court and demanding to be registered and the court allowing them to be registered and in fact compelling our NGO coordination board to register them. Number three, for us something that has worked in some instances is the use of the media because sometimes we've used the media to illustrate and highlight some of these punitive and arbitrary measures that are taken. When a planned raid is happening, just before it happens, we alert the media and we put them on the standby. Lastly is perhaps for us to think about how do donors then also as our partners set aside emergency funds for us? Because one of the things that is increasingly happening is that by the time you're being deregistered, your accounts are frozen. You do not have money for your staff, you do not have money for your programs, you do not have money for any interventions. These things happen overnight. It's a Nicodemus move. For those of you who are Christians, you'll understand Nicodemus went to see Jesus in the middle of the night. That's how it happens for us. You wake up in the morning, you're deregistered. So maybe just to plead with those of us who are here who are from the donor and partner side, how do we set up an emergency funding and an emergency kitty to be able to support the work of civil societies from Venezuela, from Honduras, from the Philippines, when they need it most when their funds have been frozen? Lastly, ladies and gentlemen, I want to take this time to honor a great member, a lawyer, a colleague, Willie Kimani, who lost his life in June, 2016, simply because he refused to abide by what was a threat from the police. He disappeared immediately after he came from Cot in June, 2016, and thereafter was found a week later, strangled and dead. Thank you. I'd now like to turn it over to Shawn Mellers from the United Kingdom.