With elections scheduled for 2022 in Kenya, political divisions, coupled with other unresolved governance challenges such as weak institutions, corruption, exclusion and high rates of youth unemployment, are likely to polarise the country. They could also create hostilities between and among single/ mixed identity groups – such as ethnic, political and religious groups – that have coexisted peacefully in the past.
With Life & Peace Institute, the Universities and Colleges Students’ Peace Association of Kenya, Pamoja for Transformation and the Catholic Diocese of Eldoret, in 2020–21 we continued our USAID-funded project to reduce violence and conflict in five counties in Kenya. We created safe spaces for different identity groups, including women and young people, to build resilient relationships and engage in conversations on issues that drive conflict.
We undertook conflict assessments across the project’s target counties and at the national level to understand the conflict dynamics. We used these assessment findings to co-create program activities with peace, governance, and electoral actors and university students from selected institutions across the five counties. Saferworld was also a core player in efforts to reform the criminal justice system, particularly related to extra-judicial killings in the informal settlements. We published a Court Users Committee handbook to ensure positive and solution-oriented engagement between citizens, human rights defenders and justice providers nationwide.
We strengthened rangeland community agency through the Ward Community Action Groups (WCAGs) and County Action Platform (CAP). Through extensive support for public participation and training, WCAGs and the CAP have emerged as empowered, inclusive, and strong community agencies, recognised by the County and National Government as core community structures in encouraging the public participation of rangeland communities, which have successfully worked with government to embed community needs in environmental policy.
WCAGs, which are giving increasing prominence to marginalised groups, including women, also played a pivotal role in promoting community dialogues, easing inter-ethnic and cross-territorial tensions. A major breakthrough was the revival of the Pokot, Turkana, and Samburu (POTUSA) grazing committee in April 2020, providing an avenue to address longstanding rangeland resource management issues on access to shared cross-boundary resources. Our work led to the establishment of the Peace and Cohesion Sector Forum (PCSF), which spearheads planning and collective efforts to intervene in conflicts and insecurity situations across the region. The PCSF has facilitated dialogues on strategic cross-territorial natural resource management issues and is now recognised as the first point of call for responding to and intervening in conflicts and insecurity matters in the region.
