COBADES

People can only demand their rights if they know what those rights are. This is one of the main reasons why COBADES was set up, says director Peter Gitonga. 'In general, Kenyans know remarkably little about democracy, democratic culture and the legal system. This causes them to put up with a lot more than they should, in the area of corruption for example. There is also something else at play. If people know nothing about the legal system, they are completely dependent on expensive lawyers if they get into trouble. In practice this means that there is no justice for the poor because they can’t afford a lawyer. This is, of course, leaving aside the corruption within the legal system itself.'

In order to tackle these problems COBADES has set up a training programme to provide teachers with courses in subjects such as the legal system, family law, criminal law, property law, the constitution, good governance, democracy, human rights, mediation and the school system. Peter Gitonga says: 'Over the course of time new subjectshave been added such as the position of women, the alleviation of poverty, hiv & aids, drug prevention, taking responsibility and communication between adults and young people. All these subjects are explored more fully within the law clubs, a kind of
discussion groups which have been set up in all schools where COBADES is active. At this moment there are some 500 of these clubs throughout Kenya.'

One of the COBADES programme’s successes has been the decline in violence in schools. 'Kenya does not have a dialogue culture and this is also true in the field of education,' says Peter Gitonga. 'That is why in the past there were a lot of student strikes, cases of arson and violence against teachers and the school management. Our programme is reducing the gap between the teachers and the students.' The Kenyan Ministry of Education is positive about COBADES work. 'As early as 2003 the ministry made part of our programme compulsory in the curriculum. The idea is to transfer our whole programme to the ministry in 2010.'

So he will be able to retire then? 'No, then we will start focusing more on civic education in villages and among women’s groups, farmers’ organisations and churches. broadly speaking we will be working within the same themes but we will adapt them to our target audiences. At the
moment we are not getting round to this as much as we would like to due to lack of capacity. but there is plenty left to do in that area.'