ABOUT KENYA COMMUNITY SUPPORT CENTRE (KECOSCE)

Kenya Community Support Centre (KECOSCE) is a Kenyan Public Benefit Organization founded and Registered in 2006 by the Government of Kenya. KECOSCE exists to contribute to a just, peaceful, and progressed society. Our mission is to inspire people and mobilize resources to strengthen our communities. This is achieved through collaborating, empowering, accompanying, and responding approaches towards promoting peaceful coexistence, good governance and sustainable social economic development at the local level and beyond.

KECOSCE has been received funding from the Amkeni Wakenya, Civil Society Democratic Governance Facility of the UNDP to implement democratic governance projects in Kilifi County. This has been instrumental in strengthening public participation and building trust with public institutions in the Coast of Kenya for the last 18 years. We recently supported the development and actualization of the Self-Regulation Framework for civil society in Kilifi as part of our efforts towards realization of human rights; entrenching human rights-centered and accountable devolved governance; promoting an enabling environment for CSOs and; building capacity of CSOs to respond effectively to contemporary governance issues.

Other publications related to this work is the Research on the status and contribution of CSOs in development, (–RESEARCH REPORT ON THE STATUS AND CONTRIBUTION OF CSOs IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Kenya Community Support Centre (KECOSCE)) and a position paper on the need to strengthen CSOs for human development (–POSITION PAPER ON STRENGTHENING CSOS IN THE COAST OF KENYA FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Kenya Community Support Centre (KECOSCE)) and the development of Self-Regulation Framework for CSOs in Kilifi. (–KILIFI CSOS SELF REGULATION FRAMEWORK Kenya Community Support Centre (KECOSCE)

For more information on our work please visit our website www.kecosce.org or reach us on email [email protected], [email protected]

I. FOREWORD

Civic space is a cornerstone of functioning democracies. Defined as the set of legal, policy, institutional and practical conditions non-state actors need to access information, express themselves, associate, organise and participate in public life, civic space is anchored in international and national legal frameworks and benefits the whole of society.

Protected civic space facilitates participation in public affairs, which is a fundamental right, according to Kenya’s constitution. It allows citizens and civil society organisations (CSOs) to engage with County and National governments, participate throughout policy- and decision-making cycles and provide oversight of government activities. By promoting and protecting civic freedoms (particularly freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association) and providing concrete opportunities for engagement, governments can in turn better align services, policies and laws to societal needs.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. In adopting the 17 SDGs that are designed to end poverty, hunger, AIDS, and discrimination against women and girls, countries among them Kenya committed to prioritize progress for those who’re furthest behind.

Notably, Kenya’s civic space is the arena for exercising freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, and fundamental for the functioning of democracy and protecting human rights. These rights are enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya (2010) and supported by various legal instruments.

Civic space further includes the latitude that citizens and their formations (groups or associations) possess to hold government, State institutions and corporate actors accountable for their actions and omissions. The civic space is an avenue where civil society in its diversity operates to play their roles and execute their mandates.

While Kenya’s legal framework provides robust protections for civic space, and the robust contributions made by CSOs, challenges persist in implementing and enforcing these rights. A 2024 study on the “Status of Civil Society Organizations and re-engineering the role of civil society organizations in the Coast of Kenya” discovered that the protection and promotion of the civic spaces is hampered by restrictive laws and regulations, excessive use of force by security agencies, digital surveillance and cyber laws that hinder freedom of expression online, threats and harassment of human rights defenders and activists and heavy reliance on donor funding. Further, there did not exist a toolkit that CSOs can use to advance the protection and promotion of civic spaces.

The toolkit was developed by KECOSCE through the support of UNDP AMKENI Wakenya and the Embassy of Netherlands in a bid to enhance the capacity of civil society organizations to fully participate in the protection and promotion of civic spaces.

This toolkit is organized in six chapters that include the introduction, the methodologies to protection and promotion of civic spaces, the legal and policy framework governing civic space protection and promotion, training modules for CSOs capacity building, templates and useful resources and links. The toolkit seeks to particularly promote the ability of CSOs in holding governments and the private sector accountable for the sake of the welfare of the community.

It is hoped it will help to strengthen the role of civil society in making meaningful contributions towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that is key to community development.

Phyllis Muema
Executive Director
KECOSCE

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRACTITIONERS’ TOOLKIT HERE