Article by PBI-Canada

On September 8, the Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project posted: “We visited human rights defenders of different Social Justice Centers and discussed safety and security for HRDs [human rights defenders] and the concerns of their communities.”

PBI-Kenya adds: “This is part of the Increased Capacities, Stronger Networks project.”

PBI-Kenya has previously explained: “This project draws on a close collaboration between the Social Justice Center Working Group and PBI Kenya and seeks to sustainably broaden or maintain the civic space and security for the Social Justice Centers.”

“[The project does so by bringing] together members of the various Social Justice Centers in Nairobi through different activities, such as risk analysis, capacity building with specific attention to holistic security management, and joint and separate advocacy activities on the national and international level.”

The project will run until December of this year and builds on the Ushirikiano Mwema kwa Usalama (Good relationships for safety) project that challenged the normalization of extra-judicial killings by the police through contextualized strategies built on local knowledge as well as global strategies on how to prevent human rights abuses.

The Social Justice Centers Working Group is the collective leadership of 24 social justice centers and activists across the country formed in 2017.

Gacheke Gachihi, the coordinator of the Mathare Social Justice Centre, has written: “These centers have created more civic spaces to convene the grassroots social justice movement, and in these spaces the focus is community organizing, the documentation of human rights violations, conducting a number of important campaigns, writing petitions and the referral of cases for redress to relevant authorities.”

Gachihi has further explained that the centers seek to: “Build a unified social justice movement in Kenya to rescue the failed democratic transition and create alternative political leadership for our social and economic liberation.”

In short, he says, to organize, educate and liberate.

PBI-Kenya works with the Social Justice Centers Working Group. It is also part of the Missing Voices network and the Police Reforms Working Group network.

The Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project was established in December 2012.