Human Rights Violation During COVID-19 in Kenya: When Poverty increases chances of Preventable Death

The Covid-19 pandemic is fast revolutionizing the world order and re-modeling operations of the industries across all sectors. Since its declaration as a global pandemic, Covid-19 continues to portray a Decline Effect phenomena. The pandemic devastates the vulnerable and marginalized people the most as it affects their livelihoods, human rights and access to basic services. This chapter uses cross-sectional design to qualitatively analyze human rights violations reported in Kenya during the initial curfew period from 27th March 2020 to 6th June 2020. Data is collected using web-based open saturation method. The author analytically reviews online briefs and reports by human rights organizations, judiciary and policing oversight authority to deduce the trends in human rights violations in Kenya during curfew period, especially in areas considered as hotspots for infections. This chapter descriptively analyzes the social media reports from verified social media accounts and mainstream media handles whose reporting of human rights violations have been confirmed by the authorities in Kenya to describe the gravity of the human rights violation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The regular WHO updates on coronavirus are used to forecast the global Covid-19 trends in socio-behavioral contexts and form comparative evaluation platforms for effective approaches that protect human rights. This chapter bases on grounded theory and elucidates the Elaboration Likelihood model (ELM) to paint the level of efficacy by authorities to protect and prevent human rights violations. This chapter deconstructs information from jurisdictions in Kenya that work on human rights to highlight approaches that have been futile using the concept of human rights.