Compared to the past years, Likoni Sub County has witnessed a transformative change in matters revolving around peace and security issues, with communities taking the lead role in taming insecurity within their locality.
The program spearheaded my Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) targets the community and mostly women and the youth in ensuring they fully participate in discussing security matters, how they can engage the community in deliberating on peaceful coexistence and fighting insecurity within their surroundings.
Speaking in Mtongwe, MUHURI Executive Director Wallid Kassim noted that women have been very critical in safeguarding their own communities right within their homes, a reason why the program is engaging them to ensure they advance community needs and deliberate on ways communities can resolve conflicts through the ongoing civic education.
The program dubbed Kenya Electoral Conflicts Mitigation and Civic Education Support Program (ECCES) accelerates public participation and civic education, enabling the community at the very grassroots level to raise their concerns, engage with authorities and together chat various ways to solve the challenges by using the existing systems and the voices of the community.
“These public engagement forums and civic education aims at uniting all quarters among them women and youth who forms the community, security agencies, the Local administrations so that concerns raised are swiftly acted upon by the duty bearers. This will tame any related conflict in such a particular area,” noted Mr Kassim.
Transformation
In a recent public participation and civic education forum held at Midodoni area in Mtongwe, Likoni Sub County, Mbuta Location Chief Rashid Abdallah noted that there has been transformative change and the program has positively impacted the community by bridging the gap between the community, security agencies, Local administration and other concerned parties and authorities.
According to Abdallah, insecurity has been the main concern among the local communities, however, with the entrance of the ECCES initiative—communities have come together—engaged, raised their voices on such critical matters and the authorities are now working with the community in ensuring a safe, secured and better environment, habitable for all.
“We have our active community policing framework. This has led to us labelling residence in a manner that any new person in the area or suspicious character can be reported to the Local administration including to our Village elders who act on such concerns until they are amicably addressed,” he noted.
He said with the ongoing development of the Dongo Kundu Special Economic Zone (SEZ), over 700 youth have been enrolled to various TVETs institutions in preparation for them to benefit from various opportunities from the mega international project.
Collaboration
Mtongwe ACC Nancy Njoroge reiterated that the Local administration is keen in working with the communities at the very grassroots level in a bid to quell any conflict.
“The community raised concerns about illicit brews, delayed actions when security concerns are raised and Village elders reporting about security issues feel unsecured. Through this program spearhead by MUHURI we are now able to closely engage the community and together address the numerous concerns raised,” she said.
Addressing the forum, MUHURI officer Mariam Adil said the program has enabled communities to fearlessly raise their concerns and get response from the authorities.
“In this initiative we have managed to bring together women, youth and persons with disabilities since they too form integral part of community development and the results are bare they know their rights, they clearly understand their challenges and they now know who should take responsibility and solve them. This is a step towards the right direction,” she disclosed.
Most of the concerns according to Mariam are insecurity, unemployed youth be registered to TVETs, the welfare of children mostly those who are not in school due to poverty and some facing challenges because of single parenting some who cannot afford their children’s education and matters revolving around peace and security.
The ongoing program implemented by MUHURI is funded by USAID through Act Change and Transform orgnisation (ACT).
