ASIL Programs > Career Development > Arthur C. Helton Fellowship > Helton Fellowship Profiles and Reflections > 2008 ASIL Helton Fellows > ASIL Helton Fellowship Reflections

Kenya Human Rights Commission
Nairobi, Kenya
By Patrick Ngugi Karanja, 2008 Arthur C. Helton Fellow

My Fellowship project was greatly influenced by what happened in Kenya during the first three months of the year 2008. During this time, the country was plunged into nationwide chaos and bloodshed following the disputed December 2007 presidential elections results. This wave of violence left more than 1,000 people dead, half a million people internally displaced, and investments worth millions of dollars destroyed. Thanks to the support of the international community and the African Union mediation initiative led by Kofi Annan, the country struggled and managed to recoup from imminent threat of civil war. Though it was not part of my Fellowship project, I soon found myself working variously with other organizations to undertake human rights investigations and to facilitate national healing, reconciliation and peace building.

My Helton Fellowship project was hosted by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) (www.khrc.or.ke) in Nairobi Kenya between May and August 2008. My initial proposal was to work with students in establishing human rights clubs as complementary forums for integrating human rights education in Kenya’s school system. This project aimed at promoting realization of the objectives of the United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005 ongoing). With KHRC being the key human rights organization in Kenya, this fellowship gave me the opportunity and a strategic forum to discuss my ideas with policy makers, human rights experts, HRE curriculum developers, teachers, and students. I was delighted to learn that KHRC had in the past facilitated formation of human rights clubs in various schools and trained teachers to be patrons of the clubs in their schools. This meant that my original goals to sensitize schools on the need for human rights education and to support students to develop the clubs had already been addressed. My task was therefore to build on the gains of KHRC and address the challenges they had encountered. It was agreed that my efforts would be more productive if I focused on building the capacity of teachers to assist the students to start or revive human rights clubs in their schools.

Photo Courtesy of Patrick Karanja, 2008 Helton Fellow, Nairobi, Kenya.

My first major task was to organize a workshop for 50 selected teachers from all over Kenya to discuss the human rights violations that were committed in the post elections violence, how and why this occurred in their communities, how it affected the teachers and students, and what interventions need to be taken through human rights education to ensure that such incidences never recur in future. It emerged that some schools blamed human rights education for arousing a clamor among the youths to demand their individual rights without impressing on them the need for civic responsibility and to respect the rights of other people. But most schools felt that were it not for the sense of responsibility nurtured by human rights education, the violence would have been worse. In June, I was involved in coordinating a countrywide essay competition for students and teachers in Kenya to reflect on human rights violations that occurred during the post elections violence and to suggest ways to enhance participatory human rights education strategies that will help promote equality and conflict prevention in the schools’ environment and in the society at large. I was privileged to meet with many policy makers to discuss how best to implement human rights and peace education in Kenya’s schools system. It was agreed that human rights education should deviate from traditional examinations-oriented approach and aim at enhancing active dialogue among students in order to contribute to change of attitudes and values, nurturing a culture of tolerance, and preventing conflicts from escalating into violence. I was also engaged in evaluating the state of human rights education in Kenya’s schools and coordinating teachers’ networks and stakeholders’ partnership for human rights education in schools. But the greatest honor was to be part of the 8 members’ technical team that edited and refined the Life Skills Education Curriculum which will be launched in Kenya’s schools in 2009. My contribution in this task was to ensure relevance, sufficiency, and correctness of human rights content in the primary and secondary schools’ curriculum for Life Skills Education. As a result of this fellowship engagement, I have been offered an opportunity to continue coordinating stakeholders’ partnership for the PAMOJA Initiative on Human Rights Education in Kenya’s schools.

Unfortunately, I was not able to visit as many schools as I wished or organize more youth forums across the country. This was partly due to insecurity in some parts of the country, interruptions of schools’ timetable, and strategic focus of most NGOs to addressing the plight of internally displaced persons.

This experience has enabled me to understand how to combine my professional passion and dedication to human rights with my professional training as a lawyer. On the one hand, I can contribute to domestic realization of international law and human rights through support for human rights based litigation in courts of law while, on the other hand, I can contribute to the international discourse for human rights and international law through research, training, and education. I realized that to be effective in delivering human rights education, I must work from all perspectives. I.e. facilitate informed active participation of the recipients, promote legislative/policy and curriculum reforms, work with other stakeholders, and to make the learning environment human rights friendly. I realized I can do more and that one approach is not enough.

To continue with what I learnt from this fellowship experience, I am working with other young people to establish International Youth Forum on Human Rights which will be a forum for youths to share experiences and best practices on youth focused human rights education and training.

Conclusion

 

 

I can best capture the moments and sentiments of my fellowship by saying “What we learn and what we have is only important if we can be creative enough to find a way to use it to make the lives of other people in the society better”. I guess this is what Albert Einstein felt when he said “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge”. I really learnt a lot and enjoyed the Fellowship experience and will forever be grateful to ASIL for making this very fundamental input towards my professional development in the field of international law and human rights.