Quakers active in Kenyan elections
Quakers helped ensure that the Kenyan election had a reduced level of violence.
Quakers from both Kenya and Britain helped to ensure that the Kenyan election, held on Monday 4 March, had a reduced level of violence. Post-election violence in Kenya in 2007 left 1,200 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Though violence again flared on election day earlier this week, with at least thirteen people killed in coordinated attacks on the coast, it came against a background of dedicated work for peace in which Quakers made a significant contribution.
In a coordinated, grassroots effort, Quakers from both Kenya and Britain were involved, before the election, in equipping Kenyans with the skills to demand justice in a nonviolent way and to help build a mass nonviolent witness for peaceful, transparent, free and fair elections.
A three-pronged approach – combining civic education and dialogue, citizen reporting and local peacebuilding responses – produced a number of community-driven initiatives to defuse tensions, challenge hate speech and hold political aspirants to account.
The initiative was based, in part, on the well-established Turning the Tide programme, established by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) at Friends House in London. Turning the Tide does not avoid conflict but rather challenges the causes of violence.
The work was supported by QPSW in partnership with three Kenyan based organisations, Change Agents for Peace International (CAPI), Friends Church Peace Teams and the African Great Lakes Initiative.
Bernard L Agona, field coordinator of the Turning the Tide Programme in Kenya, said: ‘We are seeing a new generation, a generation that are not sitting quietly any more, a generation who are coming together to resist injustice. We are also seeing a generation that want to make informed decisions.’
Over 20,000 people in the country received training in a massive ‘Know Your Rights’ campaign.
At least 1,200 became citizen reporters who were trained to raise the alarm when early warning signs of violence appeared. Another 660 served as domestic election observers.
Laura Shipler Chico, of QPSW, said that the work in Kenya was rooted in local communities: ‘That is their strength. They are a long-term effort not only to prevent election violence but to challenge the systems and structures that give rise to violence to begin with. People have mobilised their own communities and the response has not come from outside but from deep within. This is a testimony to the Quaker notion that there is that of God in everyone; the answers lie within each of us.’
The two leading candidates competing for the presidency, prime minister Raila Odinga and deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta, both condemned the attacks on election day.
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