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COUNTRY REPORT – KENYA
Chapters:
1. Introduction
2. Political context
3. Field trips – visiting non-formal schools in Kibera slum and Nairobi Children’s Remand Home
4. NGO workshop and Leadership Forum in Nairobi
5. Conclusion – highlights and challenges/recommendations
***************************************************************************
1. INTRODUCTION
The introduction of free primary education in Kenya in 2003 was a milestone in the country’s efforts to make primary education available to all Kenyan children. It represented the clearest expression of commitment so far on the part of the Government when it comes to fulfilling the child’s right to education.
In Kenya, the delegation had only one day for field trips but the two non-formal education projects visited in the Kibera slum during this one day quite explicitly showed that inhabitants of slums represent the most marginalized and vulnerable, while at the same time proportionately largest, segment of Kenya’s society.
The Kibera slum is allegedly the second largest informal settlement in Africa with up to one million people living in it. Not officially recognizing the existence of slums in the legal sense, the Kenyan government fails to address the issue of social and public services, schools, infrastructure and amenities (not) available to the population that lives there. With the state owning the entire land area of the slum, the slum dwellers in effect become illegal occupants of their own homes.
It is noteworthy that in the more well-off urban zones of Nairobi there are a disproportionate amount of public schools along private schools. Basically, in non-slum areas formal schools seem to be abundant and well developed.
A student of the Kicoshep school performing for the Africa Tour delegation
Schools in slums
The situation in slums stands in stark contrast. Due to having only one public school available in the entire Kibera slum, non-formal education (NFE) schools have mushroomed in the area over the past years.
NFE schools take a multiplicity of forms, starting from faith-based to community based organizations. Not being registered with the Ministry of Education, unscrupulous educators escape inspection, which lowers the quality of education. Only 18.1 percent of slum schools are accredited as national examination centers. As a result, pupils from NFE slum schools often fail exams mandatory for enrolling in secondary schools.
Almost all of NFE schools charge a school fee to cover their running costs and obviously, not all parents can afford to pay the fees, no matter how small. For some of the NFE school founders, the NFE schools have become a money-making enterprise rather than an educational mission.
However, NFE schools provide employment to unemployed teachers living in slums and they take school children off the streets of Nairobi and provide them a chance to reintegrate into the mainstream.
To qualify to be registered as a private or public school, a NFE school has to fulfill a number of benchmarks set by the state to ensure quality education. These are very stringent and due to being ill-equipped the benchmarks are unattainable in most cases of slum schools.
A combination of factors such as poverty, displacement, HIV & AIDS pandemic and lack of schools and professional teachers contribute to the existence of child labour in slums. According to a survey conducted by Daraja Civic Initiatives Forum in 2006, 48 percent children in Kibera and Korogocho slums are out of school. The Ministry of Education Monitoring Information System shows even a higher figure - almost 60 percent of school children in Nairobi are not enrolled in schools.
Legislation on child labour
Typically, the laws that deal with child labour, in particular the Employment Act and the Children’s Act leave too much space for interpretation. The Employment Act bans child labour under 16 but allows work for survival. Furthermore, the Children’s Act does not recognize child trafficking, despite its ever growing presence.
According to the UNICEF survey conducted in 2006, the total literacy is 85.1 percent with 90.6 percent of male and 79.7 of female. The school enrollment rate at the primary level is 66 percent for both sexes, while the secondary school enrollment is 25 percent for boys and 24 percent for girls.
The Kenyan part of the Stop Child Labour campaign’s Africa Tour 2008 was organized by CONCERN with the assistance of the Legal Awareness and Resource Center (LARC) and Legal Resources Foundation (LRF). The NGO/CSO workshop in Nairobi was also co-organized by Coexist.
The Leadership Forum at Kenyatta International Conference Center was attended by numerous stakeholders; various NGOs, government officials from Kenya’s Ministry of Education, teachers and students from several of Nairobi’s NFE schools (who kicked off the conference by theatre, poetry and singing performances).
2. POLITICAL CONTEXT
This year has brought some serious ups and downs to Kenyans. While the country is now riding high on the wave of national euphoria thanks to the victory of the nation’s “greatest son” Barack Obama (who was born to Kenyan father and American mother) in the US presidential elections just when the Africa Tour was about to conclude in Kenya, the horrid memories of the country’s own post-election violence from the beginning of the year will linger in the minds of people for quite some time. The often brutal settling of the scores between members of rival tribes all but destroyed the façade of a stable democracy that Kenya has been enjoying up until now.
Slum areas, home of the majority of Kenyan population, were among the worst-affected during the clashes with schooling falling victim to the explosive situation for weeks on end. However, there had also been some positive developments earlier this year, chief among them being the beginning of the long over-due dialogue between the government and NGOs on the issue of NFE.
The government has finally heeded the call for recognizing the non-formal education centers as part of the legitimate schooling infrastructure and is currently undertaking a laudable effort to create a complete register of the NFE institutions in the country so that it can start providing funding where it is due.
The Leadership Forum in Nairobi, which effectively closed the Africa Tour, provided a good platform for continuing the dialogue on this issue with the participation of public. It should be noted that the government used the opportunity for re-stating its commitment towards making free primary education truly universal since it is also of the opinion that school is the best counterweight to the problem of child labour.
3. FIELD TRIP - VISITING NFE SCHOOLS IN KIBERA SLUM PLUS NAIROBI CHILDREN’S REMAND HOME
In Kenya, the delegation visited two different non-formal schools in Nairobi’s largest slum area, Kibera, where up to a million people live and work so to speak in a grey zone, because in the eyes of the law their informal settlement does not exist. This has until very recently meant that the right to education of an overwhelming majority of the city’s child population has in effect been denied. There are now hopes that the situation can be addressed through a cooperation of NGOs and government.
Students from the Kicoshep school are enjoying their snack that they receive for free
The Kicoshep non-formal education school can be clearly marked as a success. This school qualifies for next year’s endorsement by the government to become a formal school. Apart from having visibly better equipment and furnishing than the St. Christine Community School on the other side of the slum, the school’s success can be proven by frequent visits by local NGOs and international media, BBC among them.
The delegation found St. Christine Community Center in a much more pitiful condition. There were small classrooms with only basic facilities and no free lunch for the children (like in the Kicoshep school). While the headmaster and four members of his teaching staff were extremely friendly and forthcoming, they did not try to hide the difficulties, the biggest among them being the lack of funding as many parents fail to pay the monthly fees for their kids.
The visit to Nairobi Children’s Remand House brought to delegation’s attention what could be justly considered best practice in the field of assistance provided to children who find themselves in conflict with the law. Providing these kids with a home away from home, it strives to intervene whenever the legal processes threaten to ruin a young life instead of helping to mend it.
Radha Koirala and teachers from St. Christine Community Center
The institution’s director sat down for an informative talk and exchange of ideas and experiences with the delegation and its local partners, which resulted in a useful discussion about matters concerning the children’s rights and child abuse in Kenya. It was noted, among other things, that Kenya is experiencing the problem with child trafficking with many children from rural areas ending up in domestic servitude in the cities with their right to education lost in the process.
Meseret tadesse from Ethiopia´s Forum on Street Children talking to St. Christine Center boys
The participants of the impromptu round-table also touched upon the issue of Kenyan police’s apparent non-cooperativeness on these issues. New initiatives to address gender and children’s issues within the Police Department are on paper only and have not yet been staffed. It was suggested, among other things, that one way of making the system more effective would be to tie it with budget as people tend to be more accountable when they have to literally account for all the money spent. Another suggestion was to clarify and streamline laws concerning child labour as there seems to be room for misinterpretation of these.
VI. LEADERSHIP FORUM IN NAIROBI
The Leadership Forum held at Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi brought together an impressive line of speakers both in the panel and in the audience. With announcements made in the local press, some people – mostly women activists - traveled up to 24 hours to be present at the event.
At the Leadership Forum in KICC in Nairobi, Kenya
While beset with the malfunctioning supply of electricity, the forum heard interesting presentations on the issue of child labour and education. The ILO office’s country representative gave an overview of the situation which tended to emphasize the positive achievements, while not denying that “child labour is getting more complex, and also more hidden” in these times.
The undersecretary from the Ministry of Education then made an honest assessment of the department’s recent efforts to integrate the non-formal education within the state-controlled system, stressing that “government alone cannot attain all the goals and relies therefore on the cooperation of other stakeholders like NGOs and community-based organizations” for whose “concerted efforts” he appealed.
“Challenges notwithstanding, education will remain to be the principle instrument in fighting child labour,” the undersecretary said, thus adopting the campaign’s central standpoint.
Children attending the Leadership Forum in Nairobi, Kenya
The Ambassador of the European Commission in Nairobi then further validated this with observations about education’s superior value and its multiplicative benefits for the economy. He also floated the idea of introducing restrictions for import of products that have been made with the help of child labour.
The head of the Africa Tour delegation, Mr. Venkat Reddy of MV Foundation, then rose to the occasion at the end of the half-day’s proceedings, and proving his worth as a renown social mobiliser, he steered the children from several of Nairobi’s non-formal schools who came to the event to declare their readiness to bring their out of school peers to classrooms by shouting “Yes, we can” and thus giving the entire tour a perfect, highly symbolic ending.
VIII. CONCLUSION – CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Highlights:
• Kenya has cut down the number of child labourers to about a million since the free primary education has been introduced on a national level in 2003
• The government and NGOs have started a dialogue on the recognisation of non-formal education centers as part of the legitimate schooling infrastructure.
• The Kicoshep non-formal education school in the Kibera slum will be listed among the “candidates” that will be inspected by the government next year for registration
• Training has started for head teachers in NFE schools on management of grants by the government
Challenges/recommendations:
In general, the government needs to:
• Recognize the existence of slums and address the issue of land in slums
• Include slums in urban development plans
• Increase public spending in slums´ infrastructure and social and educational services
• Prioritize slum education at all government levels – ministry, regional, local, community, etc.
• Provide full support to HIV & AIDS infected and affected children (orphans), so that they do not have to become the breadwinners for their family members
• Harmonize legislation, which would include guarantees for the right to education to all children and which would set a precise definition of child labour
• Train police and civil servants to adopt a child-friendly approach
• Criminalize child labour under the Penal Code
Civil society needs to:
• Lobby and inform decision makers and political leaders of the status of NFE schools in slums and in particular, the high demand for education among the slum dwellers
• Establish community based monitoring data and research systems, which would promote community engagement
• Use the information gathered for lobbying with political leaders to make them use Constituency Development Fund resources in the slums´ development
• Engage teachers´ unions to promote an adequate primary education structure
• Put pressure on private companies not to employ children
• Involve the private sector and media
Chapters:
1. Introduction
2. Political context
3. Field trips – visiting non-formal schools in Kibera slum and Nairobi Children’s Remand Home
4. NGO workshop and Leadership Forum in Nairobi
5. Conclusion – highlights and challenges/recommendations
***************************************************************************
1. INTRODUCTION
The introduction of free primary education in Kenya in 2003 was a milestone in the country’s efforts to make primary education available to all Kenyan children. It represented the clearest expression of commitment so far on the part of the Government when it comes to fulfilling the child’s right to education.
In Kenya, the delegation had only one day for field trips but the two non-formal education projects visited in the Kibera slum during this one day quite explicitly showed that inhabitants of slums represent the most marginalized and vulnerable, while at the same time proportionately largest, segment of Kenya’s society.
The Kibera slum is allegedly the second largest informal settlement in Africa with up to one million people living in it. Not officially recognizing the existence of slums in the legal sense, the Kenyan government fails to address the issue of social and public services, schools, infrastructure and amenities (not) available to the population that lives there. With the state owning the entire land area of the slum, the slum dwellers in effect become illegal occupants of their own homes.
It is noteworthy that in the more well-off urban zones of Nairobi there are a disproportionate amount of public schools along private schools. Basically, in non-slum areas formal schools seem to be abundant and well developed.
A student of the Kicoshep school performing for the Africa Tour delegation
Schools in slums
The situation in slums stands in stark contrast. Due to having only one public school available in the entire Kibera slum, non-formal education (NFE) schools have mushroomed in the area over the past years.
NFE schools take a multiplicity of forms, starting from faith-based to community based organizations. Not being registered with the Ministry of Education, unscrupulous educators escape inspection, which lowers the quality of education. Only 18.1 percent of slum schools are accredited as national examination centers. As a result, pupils from NFE slum schools often fail exams mandatory for enrolling in secondary schools.
Almost all of NFE schools charge a school fee to cover their running costs and obviously, not all parents can afford to pay the fees, no matter how small. For some of the NFE school founders, the NFE schools have become a money-making enterprise rather than an educational mission.
However, NFE schools provide employment to unemployed teachers living in slums and they take school children off the streets of Nairobi and provide them a chance to reintegrate into the mainstream.
To qualify to be registered as a private or public school, a NFE school has to fulfill a number of benchmarks set by the state to ensure quality education. These are very stringent and due to being ill-equipped the benchmarks are unattainable in most cases of slum schools.
A combination of factors such as poverty, displacement, HIV & AIDS pandemic and lack of schools and professional teachers contribute to the existence of child labour in slums. According to a survey conducted by Daraja Civic Initiatives Forum in 2006, 48 percent children in Kibera and Korogocho slums are out of school. The Ministry of Education Monitoring Information System shows even a higher figure - almost 60 percent of school children in Nairobi are not enrolled in schools.
Legislation on child labour
Typically, the laws that deal with child labour, in particular the Employment Act and the Children’s Act leave too much space for interpretation. The Employment Act bans child labour under 16 but allows work for survival. Furthermore, the Children’s Act does not recognize child trafficking, despite its ever growing presence.
According to the UNICEF survey conducted in 2006, the total literacy is 85.1 percent with 90.6 percent of male and 79.7 of female. The school enrollment rate at the primary level is 66 percent for both sexes, while the secondary school enrollment is 25 percent for boys and 24 percent for girls.
The Kenyan part of the Stop Child Labour campaign’s Africa Tour 2008 was organized by CONCERN with the assistance of the Legal Awareness and Resource Center (LARC) and Legal Resources Foundation (LRF). The NGO/CSO workshop in Nairobi was also co-organized by Coexist.
The Leadership Forum at Kenyatta International Conference Center was attended by numerous stakeholders; various NGOs, government officials from Kenya’s Ministry of Education, teachers and students from several of Nairobi’s NFE schools (who kicked off the conference by theatre, poetry and singing performances).
2. POLITICAL CONTEXT
This year has brought some serious ups and downs to Kenyans. While the country is now riding high on the wave of national euphoria thanks to the victory of the nation’s “greatest son” Barack Obama (who was born to Kenyan father and American mother) in the US presidential elections just when the Africa Tour was about to conclude in Kenya, the horrid memories of the country’s own post-election violence from the beginning of the year will linger in the minds of people for quite some time. The often brutal settling of the scores between members of rival tribes all but destroyed the façade of a stable democracy that Kenya has been enjoying up until now.
Slum areas, home of the majority of Kenyan population, were among the worst-affected during the clashes with schooling falling victim to the explosive situation for weeks on end. However, there had also been some positive developments earlier this year, chief among them being the beginning of the long over-due dialogue between the government and NGOs on the issue of NFE.
The government has finally heeded the call for recognizing the non-formal education centers as part of the legitimate schooling infrastructure and is currently undertaking a laudable effort to create a complete register of the NFE institutions in the country so that it can start providing funding where it is due.
The Leadership Forum in Nairobi, which effectively closed the Africa Tour, provided a good platform for continuing the dialogue on this issue with the participation of public. It should be noted that the government used the opportunity for re-stating its commitment towards making free primary education truly universal since it is also of the opinion that school is the best counterweight to the problem of child labour.
3. FIELD TRIP - VISITING NFE SCHOOLS IN KIBERA SLUM PLUS NAIROBI CHILDREN’S REMAND HOME
In Kenya, the delegation visited two different non-formal schools in Nairobi’s largest slum area, Kibera, where up to a million people live and work so to speak in a grey zone, because in the eyes of the law their informal settlement does not exist. This has until very recently meant that the right to education of an overwhelming majority of the city’s child population has in effect been denied. There are now hopes that the situation can be addressed through a cooperation of NGOs and government.
Students from the Kicoshep school are enjoying their snack that they receive for free
The Kicoshep non-formal education school can be clearly marked as a success. This school qualifies for next year’s endorsement by the government to become a formal school. Apart from having visibly better equipment and furnishing than the St. Christine Community School on the other side of the slum, the school’s success can be proven by frequent visits by local NGOs and international media, BBC among them.
The delegation found St. Christine Community Center in a much more pitiful condition. There were small classrooms with only basic facilities and no free lunch for the children (like in the Kicoshep school). While the headmaster and four members of his teaching staff were extremely friendly and forthcoming, they did not try to hide the difficulties, the biggest among them being the lack of funding as many parents fail to pay the monthly fees for their kids.
The visit to Nairobi Children’s Remand House brought to delegation’s attention what could be justly considered best practice in the field of assistance provided to children who find themselves in conflict with the law. Providing these kids with a home away from home, it strives to intervene whenever the legal processes threaten to ruin a young life instead of helping to mend it.
Radha Koirala and teachers from St. Christine Community Center
The institution’s director sat down for an informative talk and exchange of ideas and experiences with the delegation and its local partners, which resulted in a useful discussion about matters concerning the children’s rights and child abuse in Kenya. It was noted, among other things, that Kenya is experiencing the problem with child trafficking with many children from rural areas ending up in domestic servitude in the cities with their right to education lost in the process.
Meseret tadesse from Ethiopia´s Forum on Street Children talking to St. Christine Center boys
The participants of the impromptu round-table also touched upon the issue of Kenyan police’s apparent non-cooperativeness on these issues. New initiatives to address gender and children’s issues within the Police Department are on paper only and have not yet been staffed. It was suggested, among other things, that one way of making the system more effective would be to tie it with budget as people tend to be more accountable when they have to literally account for all the money spent. Another suggestion was to clarify and streamline laws concerning child labour as there seems to be room for misinterpretation of these.
VI. LEADERSHIP FORUM IN NAIROBI
The Leadership Forum held at Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi brought together an impressive line of speakers both in the panel and in the audience. With announcements made in the local press, some people – mostly women activists - traveled up to 24 hours to be present at the event.
At the Leadership Forum in KICC in Nairobi, Kenya
While beset with the malfunctioning supply of electricity, the forum heard interesting presentations on the issue of child labour and education. The ILO office’s country representative gave an overview of the situation which tended to emphasize the positive achievements, while not denying that “child labour is getting more complex, and also more hidden” in these times.
The undersecretary from the Ministry of Education then made an honest assessment of the department’s recent efforts to integrate the non-formal education within the state-controlled system, stressing that “government alone cannot attain all the goals and relies therefore on the cooperation of other stakeholders like NGOs and community-based organizations” for whose “concerted efforts” he appealed.
“Challenges notwithstanding, education will remain to be the principle instrument in fighting child labour,” the undersecretary said, thus adopting the campaign’s central standpoint.
Children attending the Leadership Forum in Nairobi, Kenya
The Ambassador of the European Commission in Nairobi then further validated this with observations about education’s superior value and its multiplicative benefits for the economy. He also floated the idea of introducing restrictions for import of products that have been made with the help of child labour.
The head of the Africa Tour delegation, Mr. Venkat Reddy of MV Foundation, then rose to the occasion at the end of the half-day’s proceedings, and proving his worth as a renown social mobiliser, he steered the children from several of Nairobi’s non-formal schools who came to the event to declare their readiness to bring their out of school peers to classrooms by shouting “Yes, we can” and thus giving the entire tour a perfect, highly symbolic ending.
VIII. CONCLUSION – CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Highlights:
• Kenya has cut down the number of child labourers to about a million since the free primary education has been introduced on a national level in 2003
• The government and NGOs have started a dialogue on the recognisation of non-formal education centers as part of the legitimate schooling infrastructure.
• The Kicoshep non-formal education school in the Kibera slum will be listed among the “candidates” that will be inspected by the government next year for registration
• Training has started for head teachers in NFE schools on management of grants by the government
Challenges/recommendations:
In general, the government needs to:
• Recognize the existence of slums and address the issue of land in slums
• Include slums in urban development plans
• Increase public spending in slums´ infrastructure and social and educational services
• Prioritize slum education at all government levels – ministry, regional, local, community, etc.
• Provide full support to HIV & AIDS infected and affected children (orphans), so that they do not have to become the breadwinners for their family members
• Harmonize legislation, which would include guarantees for the right to education to all children and which would set a precise definition of child labour
• Train police and civil servants to adopt a child-friendly approach
• Criminalize child labour under the Penal Code
Civil society needs to:
• Lobby and inform decision makers and political leaders of the status of NFE schools in slums and in particular, the high demand for education among the slum dwellers
• Establish community based monitoring data and research systems, which would promote community engagement
• Use the information gathered for lobbying with political leaders to make them use Constituency Development Fund resources in the slums´ development
• Engage teachers´ unions to promote an adequate primary education structure
• Put pressure on private companies not to employ children
• Involve the private sector and media
