COBADES

ORGANIZING TRAINING SESSION ON DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN KENYA

For the past ten years COBADES’ civic education programme achieved that a large number of secondary schools pay attention to democracy and human rights. There still remains a lot to be done, as the violence after the elections at the end of December 2007 proved.

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.'

ABOUT THIS PARTNER (IN ENGLISH)

COBADES, Community-Based Development Services, was founded in 1990 and became a membership organisation in 2004. The organisation promotes public legal education and human rights in Kenya and has over 750 members.
COBADES' mission is to create a just society where people's basic socio-economic and political needs are adequately met for improved sustainable livelihoods. The organisation works with communities by offering services in the areas of adult education, training, research and evaluation using people-centred participatory and integrated approaches.
It has cut a niche in building the capacities of secondary and primary teachers to offer legal and human rights education to the youth in the schools and to groups from neighbouring communities through the Public Legal Education and Human Rights Programme (PLE/HR). COBADES used this strategy to lobby for the inclusion of legal education and human rights into the school curriculum, which was achieved in 2003. Since 2004 the PLE/HR programme is implemented in close coordination with the Ministry of Education through the District Education Offices.
External evaluations and regular analyses of COBADES' programme activities over the years suggested that the results were generally positive, but that they would gain from a more holistic approach. As a result, topics on HIV/AIDS, gender disparity and drug abuse were subsequently infused in the training content of the education programme. COBADES adopted a Gender policy in 2004.
COBADES has a wide network of collaborative organisations including, CLARION, GOK-MOEST, KIE, KHRC, LRF, etc. As part of network organisation Creco, COBADES collaborated in civic and voter education during the election years. They also monitored the elections.

Hivos supports COBADES since 1997, because its programme is well defined, costs efficient and it aims at embedding legal and human rights issues in Kenya's regular educational curriculum to ensure sustainability of human rights education.

Type of organisation

Membership organisation

Sector

Human Rights & Democratisation

Country

Kenya

Founded

1993

Hivos partner since

1997

Website

More information

» | About this partner (in English)

» | About this partner's projects (in English)

CONTACT

COBADES

Public Legal& Human Rights Education Programme 2008-2010
DAC-sectors	Education other (not BSS) Human rights
Location	Kenya
Beneficiary	not relevant/other
activity	PLE-HR Programme
Direct outreach	1200 - Beneficiaries: poor and/or marginalised women and men
Indirect outreach	30000 - Beneficiaries: poor and/or marginalised women and men
activity	Organisational Strengthening
Direct outreach	750 - Policy level/ institutional
Indirect outreach	2000 - Policy level/ institutional
Contract total	272.000
Contractperiod	01-01-2008 until 31-12-2010

Description

COBADES concluded that there is an ongoing need for education on human rights and the principles on democracy among teachers and Kenya's young generation. Therefore, COBADES continues and extends their Public Legal Ecuation and Human Rights programme (PLE/HR) in primary and secondary schools. Each year, PLE/HR training workshops are conducted in 4 new districts for at least 40 (head) teachers per training. Next to this, COBADES has planned the following activities for the period 2008-2010:
- COBADES continues the training of interns (24) in the PLE/HR curriculum and training teams are formed at district level for follow-up activities.
- COBADES organizes 6 special gender mainstreaming workshops to strengthen the gender capacity of patrons. The organisation also works on improvement of the gender balance in leading positions for female teachers and students.
- Bi-annual publication of Newsletter with 95% contributions from students and law club patrons on HRD issues.
- COBADES strengtens their network with like-minded NGOs, members of the judiciary and government departments and makes use of their expertise in trainings and resource material.
- COBADES aims to hand over the PLE/HR programme tot the Ministry of Education in 2010.

Hivos supports these activities as COBADES strengthens human rights awareness in Kenya among youth and teachers and has succesfully implemented human rights education in school curriculum.