Children in Kibera express their concerns over peace in the coming elections

Students’ leaders in the entire Kibera population have added their voices to the need for peaceful elections during the fourth coming general elections in Kenya. In an event organised by the Action Inter Ethnic- Youth Dialogue and Peaceful Reconciliation Project, a partner project by Umande Trust, Sustainable Energy and nine youth organisations in Kibera and funded by the European Union; students leaders all over Kibera came together on the 22^nd of February 2013 at Salvation Army in Kianda. The meeting dubbed school students symposium was organised with the aim of providing a platform where the peace concerns of the children in Kibera can be heard and action be taken especially during the election period. This was organised considering that children stand to suffer when there is violence in the community. As it is, schools will be closed during the election week. 

The round-table talks that were later punctuated with a session on public speaking on the role of Kibera students leaders in peace building saw the students identify issues such as trends, ethnicity, territorial disputes and common accepted stereotypes and dangerous emerging youth culture contribute a lot to the insecurity among the students and this is always translated to the community as a whole. The student leaders generally agreed that youth form trends such as substance abuse to look cool among their peers but this in the long run can create dependent youth who resort to stealing to maintain this lifestyle. “It is always easy to start drinking and smoking because your friends provide the stuff in the early stages but after addiction, you need to buy your own. Most students resort to dangerous ways like stealing, sometimes violently, and this compromise the peace situation in Kibera,” One student said at the conference.

In identifying these issues, the young leaders majorly agreed that these peace threats can be associated by the peer pressure that is very common in the schools for nobody want to fail to get recognized by friends. The head prefect from Nairobi Day School summed it such: “There is a general dangerous trend emerging across the Kibera schools. Young boys are recruited in community gangs and introduced to illegal activities by those they consider friends in the school. It is no longer fashionable to be disciplined in school. The order of the day is to see young students defying simple instructions and thus ending up either causing trouble in the community or falling victims to circumstances within their control. The bottom line is negative peer pressure. If students desist from this then we shall see a different Kibera.” It is from this background that then the students looked at possible ways of changing the situation.

From most of the deliberations presented, there was a general belief that students can start by understanding and inculcating the basic tenets of morals that in the long run can contribute to the peace agenda in Kibera. It was interesting to note that all the students who contributed to the debate knew the importance of morals such as discipline, self control and compassion for your neighbour. The student leaders created the belief and conviction that the community needed each person’s contribution towards the realization of a peaceful and safe Kibera. To start with, they accepted to be commissioned as peace mentors and promised to mentor the other students in school so as to offer the link between nurturing young leadership towards peace building in Kibera. The students too took a pledge to keep the peace alive in Kibera.

By Ramogi Osewe