We are honored to be part of a grant & partnership with Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) aimed at strengthening capacity and sharing knowledge as part of Kenya’s strategy to prevent and counter violent extremism and build community sustainability.
GCERF’s proposed Investment Strategy in Kenya contributes to GCERF’s key leverage points, most notably Community Agency, by investing in local P/CVE structures and supporting community-level intervention to address the drivers of violent extremism (VE). It also aligns with GCERF’s new three-year strategy, with a focus on capacity development as a means to
scale impact.
Given Kenya’s decade-long history with terror, consequently Kenya also has a well-developed state and non-state preventing/countering VE (P/CVE) sector and a robust institutional capacity to respond to VE. However, despite this relatively advanced P/CVE system, coordination and collaboration across state and non-state actors remains weak, high levels of distrust between government and communities persist and the voices of those most at-risk of radicalization and recruitment go unheard in the forums, platforms and policies established to build greater resilience to VE. At the coast, North Eastern, and Nairobi in particular, where fear and suspicion run high among communities, both of Al-Shabaab and of government, the GCERF programme additional efforts are will catalyze greater trust and collaboration and design initiatives that demonstrate nuanced understanding of the risks faced by those women, men, girls and boys who are most vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment.
The combine effect of stalling government initiatives to address VE and shifting VE dynamics means that the government of Kenya (GoK) will increasingly rely more heavily on collaboration with communities and civil society to understand what risks exists and how best to address them. The time is therefore ripe to build greater collective knowledge and capacities among state and non-state stakeholders, to collaboratively mitigate the security and social development factors that leave individuals vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment and build greater community resilience to VE actors and organizations.
There is requirement for comprehensive capacity building approach that involves increased application of skills and abilities, law reform, increasing the overall capacity of state actors, adhering to human rights principles and infusing gender equality in all efforts. Effective coordination horizontally across the system (duty bearers, right holders and international community) is an essential precondition to the success of such capacity building initiative.
