Article by PBI-Canada

The Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project and Peace Brigades International-United Kingdom have just released a new 14-minute documentary titled Ghetto Justice. That documentary can be seen by clicking here.

It raises many issues including mobilizing for social justice, the human right to water, and police killings in the informal settlements of Nairobi.

The film notes: “The Missing Voices Coalition has documented 119 victims of police killings and enforced disappearances from January to September 2020.”

The Mathare Social Justice Centre previously documented police killings between 2013 and 2015 in the informal settlement of Mathare in this landmark report.

In the documentary, Steve Kinuthia of the Mathare Social Justice Centre says: [PBI was] there in 2015 when we started and they have been part of the journey. [They gave] us protective accompaniment when we are going to police stations.”

There is also an inter-relationship to the human right to water.

In the documentary, Gacheke Gachihi of the Mathare Social Justice Centre says: “Even if there is a major crisis of lack of water … citizens don’t rise up because every time, and the police use this, anyone who raises a voice is criminalized.”

The cost to access water through a metred dispenser in an informal settlement is about 0.50 shillings for 20 litres of water. But given water may only be available that way two or three times a week, a resident is more likely to have to pay 2 shillings for a 20 litre jerry can of water. As such, even a basic allocation of 100 litres of water a day would cost roughly 10 per cent of the daily income for many living in the informal settlements.

PBI-Kenya continues to work with the Social Justice Centres Working Group, the collective voice of 24 social justice centres, which is demanding that “the government restore the water supply to all slums and crack down on the water cartels that extort Kenyans.”

PBI-Kenya is also part of the Missing Voices Coalition noted above, a group of organizations that work to end enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

PBI-Kenya was established in December 2012.

To watch the documentary, click on Ghetto Justice.