Strengthening Human Rights and Resilience in Kenya – The Haki Ni Yetu Project

Pauliina Savola, 2024 chairperson of the Steering Committee of the Haki Ni Yetu project, reflects on the role of the project in strengthening civil society’s ability to advocate for human rights. The project  embodies the belief that real change begins at the grassroots level.

In January 2024, I had the privilege of attending the first Steering Committee meeting for the Haki Ni Yetu project in Nairobi, Kenya. After nearly nine months of work, it was high time to reflect on the first leg of the project.

Haki ni Yetu, which will run until 2027, is a collaboration between the KIOS Foundation and Kenyan partners, InformAction (IFA) and the CSO Network. The shared mission of the project is to empower civil society and community-based organisations (CBOs) across Kenya, ensuring they have the tools, knowledge, and resources needed to advocate for democracy, the rule of law, gender equality, and human rights in an increasingly challenging environment.

As the Chairperson, this meeting offered a profound opportunity to reflect on the significant work ahead and to meet the other esteemed Steering Committee members, Kenyan human rights experts and advocates – a group of brilliant minds and rock-solid expertise if there ever was one.

For those of you not as familiar with the bureaucratic intricacies of the CSO/NGO sector, the mandate of a Steering Committee (SC) is to guide the decision-making and provide oversight to the project. This can be, for example, strategic and policy guidance and approval of the activities and budgets proposed. The SC is, by and large, an advisory body. While the professionalism and actual activities rest on the shoulders of the project consortium partners and their staff, the Steering Committee could be compared to a watchtower of the project, providing help at crucial crossroads or bringing up possible pain points.

For me personally, having the opportunity to be a part of this group has marked a return to the issues close to my heart: human rights and advocating space for civil society.

Having worked on questions of enabling civil society and human rights in one form or another over the last 15 or so years, the spirit, passion and resilience of the work on the ground – in this case Kenya and the local partners – never ceases to amaze me.

Kenya’s Human Rights Landscape

While Kenya has seen some improvements in civic space and awareness of human rights issues, significant concerns remain. According to Civicus, civic space in Kenya is currently rated as “obstructed,” reflecting a landscape where civil society organisations (CSOs) face various restrictions, including legal and administrative hurdles, harassment, and intimidation.

The recent demonstrations in Nairobi, sparked by frustrations over economic conditions and perceived political corruption, underscore the ongoing struggle for transparency and accountability in Kenya’s governance. The violent crackdown on these protests, as documented by Human Rights Watch, highlights the urgent need for projects like Haki Ni Yetu that aim to strengthen civil society’s ability to advocate for human rights.

These protests, while in fact a sign of a vibrant civil society, have often been met with excessive force by security agencies, and a number of human rights violations.

Real change starts from the ground up

One of the key elements of the Haki Ni Yetu project is its focus on capacity building. This involves not only providing financial support through (relatively small) grants but also offering training and resources that help organisations strengthen their operational capacities.

At the heart of the Haki Ni Yetu project is the belief that real change starts from the ground up.

By empowering grassroots organisations—those who are closest to the issues and most affected by them—we are helping to create a more resilient and responsive civil society.

The project capacity building exercises are taking in over 10 counties around Kenya. This is the kind of work that takes time but at best, the results are transformative.

The success of the Haki Ni Yetu project depends not just on the efforts of those directly involved, but also on the support and engagement of the broader public and international community – for instance the European Union, which funds Haki Ni Yetu, and other international organisations and nation states. A strong civil society and democracy are interlinked and require one another to function well.

That’s why I’m rather concerned about Finland’s pivot towards a more insular foreign policy stance which in my mind raises concerns about the future of international cooperation in human rights advocacy. When push comes to shove, among whom do we stand?

That said, the true drivers of change are the Kenyan people —those who are working tirelessly to hold government accountable, and to ensure that every Kenyan has their inherent human rights fulfilled. This work deserves all the support, political and financial, we can muster up.