Recently the Kenyan Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua warned the international community against pressurizing her government because it is a 'sovereign state.' Karua's understanding and application of ‘sovereignty’ when Kenyans are slaughtering each other yet her government has failed to guarantee security of persons, needs to be challenged. State sovereignty is no defense when gross violations of human rights are happening. The political junta and the opposition cannot be allowed to put Kenyan lives at risk. In fact ,the international community has been slow and weak in applying pressure. Juntas and cliques holding people at ransom should not be begged simply because they possess coercive instruments of power!

State sovereignty derives its legitimacy from people’s sovereignty. The state is an agent. The preservation of the latter cannot be done at the expense of the former. Individual sovereignty is a natural right that man comes into life with. Man is by nature a sovereign citizen of the earth and by this status, his/her inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property are inviolable.

Martha Karua and her government should be reminded that with the recognition of national sovereignty by the international community  (through membership in the UN) come certain expectations. These include the protection of individual human beings- not those who abuse them.

Yes, the charter restricts intervention in matters “essentially in the domestic jurisdiction of the state” but the argument here is that sovereignty rests also in individuals. By implication, to the extent that a state violates the latter type of sovereignty, it sacrifices some of its claims to the former. In signing the UN charter, a state accepts the responsibilities of membership… there is no transfer or dilution of state sovereignty. But there is a necessary re-characterization: from sovereignty as control, to sovereignty as a responsibility for the welfare of its citizens.

Bad governments use ‘sovereignty’ to mask their inappropriate activities from international scrutiny. They have succeeded in doing so because international communities exist only where they have vested strategic interests. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is a vivid testimony to this apathy.

Karua and her political junta should realise the state has failed in its social contractual obligations and that is why there is chaos. Can a state claim sovereignty when it cannot protect its citizens from violence and insecurity? In a situation such as this, the organised society of nations should actually intervene.

It is becoming more and more realistic to create a supra mechanism that can keep states in check. While I respect the efforts of regional leaders to create communities and organisations, but these remain weak and ineffective because they are subordinate to those who create them.

It is time African leaders realised that no one is immune to violence and the evils of conflict and war. We should respect human dignity, which is the reason we too are respected. Sovereignty can go, it did not create people; people made it. The State is a creature of human want; people can set it aside.

Think of how many Africans live abroad as refugees simply because of failed states that keep on boasting of sovereignty!? These Africans, though refugees, enjoy a level of human dignity in their host countries. They are the sovereigns of themselves.