- The lobby will also double down on its efforts on seeking observance of digital rights of citizens as the Data Protection Act of 2019.
- It says it has doubled its budget between 2020 and 2023 and diversified its funding base by 40 per cent.
Image: HANDOUT
Building organic citizen activist groups, championing for safety of sexual minorities and agitation against police abuse of power will be key focus of Amnesty International’s campaign in the country in the next four years.
The Sh500 million plan says much of the entity's energy will be focused on training regular members of public to stand up to the powerful and ramping up pressure to secure environment for sexual minorities.
Perhaps outstanding in the 2024-28 strategic plan of the Houghton Irungu-led lobby is its focus on, among others, identity groups, including sexual minorities for which its says it will campaign for safety.
In this, it says its focus will be to ensure that “all persons and groups experience safety and equal access to fair and swift justice in line with the constitution and the rule of law.”
Its strategic partners in pursing this goal, according to the document, include police reform working group, Missing Voices, Ipoa, Witness Protection Agency, Law Society of Kenya, National Council on Administration of Justice as well as identity-based activist associations believed to include the National Gays and Lesbians Human Rights Commission.
The lobby has isolated six key thematic areas of its priority advocacy between 2024 and 2028, priming empowering citizens movements to hold power accountable, as well as sustaining push for police reforms to engender accountability.
In its crusading for empowering organic regular citizen-organised groups, the lobby aims to ensure they are well resourced “to demand democratic governance, freedom and justice.”
Amnesty International has been establishing what it calls circles of conscience formed in various settings in which members of the public lock hands to form accountability groups that champion issues relevant to them and ultimately holding duty bearers to account.
It says that in its previous strategic planning that ran between 2021 and 2023, it “deepened our domestic accountability to an annual membership forum, all Kenyan 13-member board, 3,500 paid-up members and 107 circles of conscience across 12 counties.”
The investment in organic activism groups, the lobby is counting on online membership drive, and sustaining agenda that matters to the public and uptake citizen vigilance.
“Our membership growth and movement-building model will accelerate online and offline member and support engagement through circles of conscience and strategic partners,” it says.
“Further localisation and resourcing of our circles of conscience across 47 counties will see them increasingly more adequately financially resourced and equipped with the tools to promote human rights education, recruit members and supports and refer human rights violations of duty-bearers.”
“We will consistently reach and engage Kenyans directly through public activities and millions of Kenya indirectly through mass and social media.”
The entity also plans to be intensely involved in monitoring the budgetary and legislative processes to ensure compliance with human rights standards and sustainable development principles. In this respect, it aims to collaborate with labour-based associations such as trade unions to champion better working environment and fair practices.
Further, it says campaign against corruption and impunity will form the core of its work and that it will not just target national and county administrations, but also national and international institutions.
The lobby will also double down on its efforts on seeking observance of digital rights of citizens as the Data Protection Act of 2019, with focus on disinformation, invasive breaches of big data, and personal privacy.
The budget to foot these initiatives will be Sh500 million “with 20 per cent of Amnesty International Kenya revenue generated by individual giving, assets and investments.”
“We will introduce life membership and donation categories for members and supporters."
It says it has doubled its budget between 2020 and 2023 and diversified its funding base by 40 per cent.