Peace
The UN WOMEN has convened a meeting in Uasin Gishu county to foster greater commitment to peaceful elections in Kenya. The meeting brought together key stakeholders from the national, county governments, the media, youth representatives, and civil servants who are all committed to making Kenya a safer and more inclusive place regardless of gender or background.
Speaking to media in Eldoret, UN WOMEN peace and security unit representative Catherine Chegero noted that the forum provided an important opportunity for stakeholders to share their experiences and best practices, ensuring that peace and security measures are inclusive and sustainable.
“In 2022 electioneering period we went around 22 counties to create awareness on peaceful elections and one of the things we realized is that we started our initiatives close to the electioneering period we started in January and the elections were in August,” she said.
Chegero noted that the feedback received was that advocacy on peaceful elections should start a bit earlier and not when the electioneering period is close.
“The selected 22 counties we visited were because of the study that had been done with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) and were brought out as the hotspots areas and that is why we had focused on them,” said Chegero.
“Under the deepening democracy program, we thought of talking to counties, especially the hotspot counties as they had done really well during the 2022 electioneering period and they had changed the narrative as we thought we would experience conflict and we saw the elections were peaceful,” she added.
“We resolved to have a conversation and ask ourselves what we did well and how we saw the 2022 elections, areas that we saw gaps and what we can do better in the future,” said Chegero.
“Since we could not cover all 22 counties, we started working closely with NCIC, The National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management (NSC) to just come up with some counties where we can go and have these conversations especially counties that we had really envisioned them being hotspot,” noted Chegero.
She noted that they had covered Mombasa, Kericho, Kisumu, Eldoret and Nakuru counties. “Unfortunately, the project came to an end last month but that does not mean we stop going around hot spot counties. We plan to continue having these conversations across the country so as to have peace as a whole,” she added.
“These are initiatives that we will continue to do and continue to support counties to convene themselves and most importantly to note that UN women is not here to run an agenda, but to convene the society and allow the society to have a conversation among themselves and for them to come up with strategies that will help them to ensure that they have a peaceful country,” she explained.
“To support these initiatives as UN women, we are keen on ensuring that women and youth are involved in these conversations and how we can enhance their voices and have an all-inclusive space, where everybody can be able to speak and enhance peace within their specific counties,” noted Chegero.
She added that in 2022 they worked with rural women peace groups and the youths were also involved. “We are looking forward to working with more youth and we will be working with National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and we will be keen on young people and see how we can work with them in regard to sports, youth peace and security programs,” she said.
Chegero noted that Kenya is going to be one of the countries that will be developing a peace and security action plan and this will be a conversation at the grassroots levels.
“The way we have been able to enhance women with skills on peace building and for them to actively participate in peace and security space, is the same energy we are going to give to young people and ensure the young people are operating from a point of knowledge,” she noted.