JOINT ORGANISATION IN KENYA CALLS FOR CHILDREN PROTECTION DURING POLITICAL DEMONSTRATIONS

 JOINT ORGANISATION IN KENYA CALLS FOR CHILDREN PROTECTION DURING POLITICAL  DEMONSTRATIONS .

County Diary news 

By MAXIMILLA WAFULA & PATRICK KIMANZI 

The Kenya alliance for   member partners from 15 counties in Kenya led by Director Tim Ekessa held a conference at Westlands, to highlights on the need to protect Children during political demonstrations and cases of children who have been hurt , maimed, shot , tear gassed and traumatized in places of safety and comfort i.e schools , estates and homesteads as the Kenyan adults of all shades and creed express their constitutional rights to assembly through demonstrations that have become frequent , rampant, worrying and disheartening.  

Speaking during the conference he said that the country has just recovered from the devastating effects of COVID - 19 Pandemic that forced schools and other institutions of learning to be closed for nine months in Kenya , which resulted in crash programme in the midst of transiting from 8-4-4 Curriculum to competency based curriculum CBC , not to mention the general elections that also affected concentration of children in schools given the noisy campaigns. It was expectation of all that after the elections , the country would settle down and allow children to enjoy their constitutional rights as enshrined in the education Act 2013 Children act 2022.

Recent demonstrations reports states that 3 out of the 23 persons who  lost their life  as a result of the protests were school going Children , where mostly affected in additional to tear-gassing of primary, homestead , and learning centres , (schools) , this has resulted in many  children's  scared of going back to school!!!

The Joint Organisation Speaking during the conference called upon the government leaders and  the political class at all levels( ruling and opposition parties) to re- direct their energies to address salient challenges that we are grappling with such as the transitional bottlenecks of CBC system addressing the shortfall of both Junior and Secondary Schools.

There is enough work for all of us if we focus on the child development in our various capacities given that all Ares in the government has child protection structure even in the National police department.