Mercy Lolwe (not her real name) is a 15-year-old girl who lives in Mukuru-Kware. She is an orphan and has been under the care of her firstborn sister, a university student who has committed to support. Mercy hopes to join form one in May 2022. She got deceived by her friends and engaged in an unbecoming behavior such that even though if she was a bright student, she still dropped in her performance. During all these, she engaged in a relationship with her male class teacher. Her mind was distorted and she could not concentrate on her studies anymore. Through the survivors’ network she was able to access counselling that has helped her to rethink about her priorities and life and she has changed her view of life. Counselling sessions have taken quite some time but through her consistency, she has realized her mistakes and is ready to focus on her education by abandoning all those friends that influenced her negatively, as she waits to join form one.
Access to justice is a project by Africa Youth Trust with a goal to increase access to justice and security for women and girls living in the informal settlements of Nairobi by connecting women and girls experiencing sexual and Gender based violence to legal, medical psychosocial support through an innovative mobile technology 21094.
The objectives of the project are;
- Utilize innovative mobile technology for raising awareness and reporting incidences of violence.
- Increase community members’ understanding of women’s rights and empower women and girls to use the reporting and justice mechanisms and improve their income through economic empowerment initiatives.
- Improve the provision of services, including medical, legal and psychosocial support for women and girls who have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence.
- Advance the economic security for survivors of SGBV through economic empowerment.
The access to justice project is being implemented in the areas of Mukuru kwa Njenga, Ruben, Kayaba, Pipeline, Kware, Lungalunga, Imara, and Viwandani with aim of restoring dignity to survivors of Gender based violence.
As a society we have our role to play in ensuring that we have a free Gender based violence community. “We have to understand that Sexual Gender Based violence is a violation of human rights. In knowing this we are able to protect our women and girls and also preventing it. We should know that the rights of women and girls are not less than any other rights and that they need to be respected because they are fundamental human rights” Says Mary OJwang the Project Officer at Africa Youth Trust.
In order to ensure that survivors get the justice they deserve, Africa Youth Trust through this project creates links whereby when a case is reported we ensure that the survivors are able to get justice, medical attention, legal support and help them to get through the hurdles in their pursuit for justice. Instances where the survivors are not able to get P3 forms, we ensure that they are accessible to them and legal aid is given where needed.
The survivors are further enrolled into a survivors’ network group where they go through the counselling sessions with a qualified counsellor and later on enrolled to an economic empowerment group where they are trained in entrepreneurship because we believe that at times financial insecurity is one of the reason that keeps the survivors in abusive environments. Currently we have survivors who have learnt on how to make soap and detergent and they sell it to make money for themselves. As an organization part of our sustainability plan is that as much as our survivors go through the healing process, we engage the devolved government to create a link for the survivors to be able to access the affirmative action funds to start their business and grow them to the next level. We have 45 survivors on board in the survivors’ network group with an aim of getting to 300 survivors by the end of the year 2022.
Africa Youth Trust works hand in hand with the donor for Access to justice project, Action Aid Kenya and also in partnership with local stakeholders in the community where they offer safe houses in cases where we have survivors of rape that need a place to stay as the legal procedures go on. We also work closely with Tumaini Clinic and MSF for medical interventions when needed. We are part of the court users committee in Makadara law courts where we are able to discuss the issues that delay justice, for example you get that so many cases of Sexual Gender Based Violence are reported yet very few get the justice or the cases take too long in the court. Being part of the court users committee gives us an opportunity to raise these issues and come up with strategies that will ensure that justice is served. We get to know why the cases are taking so long and what happens in terms of evidence extraction and what should be done so that we avoid cases of evidence tampering.
Africa Youth Trust works hand in hand with community champions and whistle blowers who link the survivors to the organization. These case managers are qualified community health volunteers who handle the cases, respond to them and help the survivors in terms of reporting. The case managers help the survivors to report the cases on the Innovative technology SMS platform 21094, in the month of January to March we have had 171 cases reported into our systems and all these cases have been linked to medical, legal and psychosocial services.
As an organization we have trained 46 police officers this is to equip them with skills in response, how to handle survivors and sensitivity of Gender based violence cases. However we have come across challenges whereby you find a police officer that had been trained is transferred to another post and this takes us a step back, this is why we have suggested in Gender based violence working group that a course on Gender based violence case management, response , prevention ,sensitivity and protection should be incorporated in the police trainings.