Unlocking civil society voices for sustainable development in Kenya

Promotion of public participation in socio-economic and public governance through the reinforcement of civil society capacity Through civic participation, the outcome aims to operate a paradigmatic shift towards an approach to development grounded in the Rule of law and based on human rights. This shift is in turn expected to make socio economic development more inclusive and sustainable. The outcome draws on ASF’s prior realizations in Kenya, and is in line with ASF’s regional strategy for Eastern Africa. The outcome focuses on civil society organizations, but also offers ways of engagement with private companies, governmental bodies, judicial and security authorities. The program will work through three key result areas. Under Result 1 “Grass root organizations and CSOs improve their methods of engagement with duty-bearers”, it is expected that CSOs and grass root organizations will enhance their ability to act as relays between affected populations and the duty-bearers, in view of activating the latter in the search for solutions to justice issues encountered. Under result 2 “CSOs and LASPs are able to accompany local populations in seeking remedy”, the data collected in result 1 is mobilized in support of access to justice for the final beneficiaries. The result uses four main approaches: (1) a reinforcement of the pathways to remedies, through CSOs, more precisely through CSOS acting as Legal Aid Service Providers (LASP) in targeted areas; (2) a Public Legal Education program aiming at the legal empowerment of local populations; (3) an engagement with remedies through paralegals intervention and support to the penal chain coordination, and (4) an effort to increase the resilience of the CSOs. Under result 3: CSOs influence national and regional decision-makers to adopt positive reforms. The result operates at two different levels: (1) it seeks to feed policy-makers and civil society actors with analytical products to inform policy reforms; (2) it seeks to compel decision-makers to adopting reforms through the use of oversight mechanisms at national and regional levels.