Posted by Jennifer Foulds
After violence erupted in Kenya following the 2007 election, AMREF went into immediate action to provide health care and humanitarian assistance to those who were forced to flee their homes.
While many health clinics closed during the chaos, AMREF set up mobile clinics to make sure people living in camps could get critically-needed medical care: services for pregnant women and new mothers, immunization, health education, counselling, and HIV/ AIDS and TB care and treatment.
But that's not all AMREF did. We also started working on building peace in prepartion for the next election, happening today in Kenya.
My AMREF Kenya colleague, Betty Muriuki, just sent me this story about AMREF's peace work in Dagoretti.
Building Peace to Foster Health and Development
Dagoretti District, home to the Dagoretti Child in Need Project, was greatly affected by the 2008 post election violence in Kenya. Many people were ejected from the district on the basis of their ethnicity. At the same time, there was also an influx of hundreds of people from other parts of Kenya who had lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of the unrest.
Based on this experience, the project has been working at the national level with the Child Protection in Emergencies working group headed by UNICEF and with various structures within Government and the community to ensure the child protection system does not collapse in case of a recurrence of violence in today's election.
Following the conflict in 2008 that led to polarization of the community on tribal lines, the Dagoretti Child in Need Project, together with the Dagoretti Sports Council, organized a soccer competition dubbed ?Taifa Moja Tournament' with the objective of involving the youth in peace-building. The tournament reached over 5,000 youth in six months.
The tournament proved to be a powerful way to reach out to the young people who were manipulated by politicians to propagate violence in the last election. In addition, AMREF has been using various approaches to reach out to various groups within the community with messages on issues that affect children during conflict. This includes working with the Dagoretti District Peace Committee, a structure formed by the Government to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining peace, to monitor incidences of unrest and to facilitate conflict resolution.
In readiness for the coming elections, the District Peace Committee and AMREF have over the past several months held a series of public meetings in the Dagoretti area to address issues that perpetuate crime and conflict, including illicit brews, drug abuse, availability of small arms, business rivalry, unemployment, and negative ethnicity. Other non-governmental orgnaizations (NGOs) operating in the area and institutions such as the church have been involved in the meetings and in planning mitigation in case of violence.
AMREF is prepared to provide the community with water and sanitation support, as well as shelter for women and children at the Dagoretti Centre should the need arise. Children catered for by the centre have been given extra food supplies and advised on ways to keep themselves safe.
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