JANE MACHIRA

JANE MACHIRA

The Hon. Jane Machira popularly known as Mama Amani is a Kenyan legislator, peace, and human rights activist. She has several years of experience in community development where she is identified with several peace initiatives.

Iwas born in Laikipia County in Kenya. Even though I had opportunities to live and work outside the County, after I started my family, I raised my four children in Laikipia County. It is a region I am very familiar with. I have witnessed the development, the challenges and have knowledge of the prospects that lie within the County. This is how my activism began. Having witnessed and experienced first-hand how instability and poverty ravaged families and how women struggled to navigate the challenges, I was convinced mobilizing change from the bottom-up was a strategy that would bring longterm and sustainable change. I began by having informal discussions with women at the church and in our table-banking groups on how we could turn around the cycle of poverty and instability through small efforts such as having the discussions with our husbands and sons, encouraging the church leaders to enhance calls for peace, for local leaders to be vigilant and bring perpetrators to book and so on.

These efforts, with time, became conversation starters and avenues for extended discussions and discourse. I then proceeded to join peace caravans that were organized by NGOs and the government to call for peace within the region. This expanded my network and exposure to the terrain and issues across the county. It was then in 1997 that I was employed as a Programs Officer at the Centre for Conflict Resolution-Kenya and formally continued the conflict resolution, mediation, and peace efforts in a formally structured way. My responsibilities were to initiate and support initiatives to address the cycle of violent inter-ethnic conflict in the three neighboring counties of Laikipia, Samburu and Baringo that are inhabited by both farmers and pastoralists and has over the years recorded frequent cases of cattle rustling, human-wildlife conflict, and other security related issues. This was mostly attributed to competition over scarce and diminishing water and pastures, the proliferation of small arms and weapons, the decline of the role of community elders, political incitement, detrimental culture practices, marginalization, and insufficient state security personnel.

During this time, under the organization, we were able to train nearly 6,000 locals, village elders and the clergy as peacemakers and mediators to actively participate in community meetings (barazas), peace committees, peace caravans and to support the community elders in the arbitration function as local approaches to peacebuilding initiatives.

Throughout my journey, I have recorded several notable achievements that have given me gratification to see change in the county of Laikipia. Most importantly, I saw the reduction of the cycle of violent conflicts that always plagued the county, security has improved, the respect for human rights and good governance at the local level has also improved following the use of community-led strategies, there is inter-ethnic tolerance among members of different ethnic communities, and the implementation of sustainable prevention and management of

Local peace builders celebrate UNSCR1325 anniversary in Isiolo County, Kenya. ©UN Women Kenya/Luke Horswell

We must address all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls and traditional and harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

post-conflict reconstruction and development initiatives that have made it a safe environment for all, especially women and children. Another achievement I have recorded is breaking the ceiling and demonstrating that women can contribute meaningfully to the peace and security architecture that is mostly male dominated.

I was able to serve in the Laikipia District Peace Committee, during which we established policies and conflict resolution mechanisms. I was able to use sports as a reconciliation measure and see the positive impact where warring communities were brought together to either play or watch the football matches thus encouraging peaceful co-existence of communities. I was able to secure four training opportunities on conflict resolution and peace training in Arusha, Tanzania at the MS TCDC and enrolled over 500 locals drawn from the church clergy, local leaders, women, and youth to attend and benefit from the training. The efforts of these peacebuilding and conflict prevention initiatives had a positive impact by diffusing the tensions during the post-election violence of 2007-08 as the cosmopolitan counties had learned the aspects of peaceful co-existence and registered minimal conflicts and violence.

By demonstrating my leadership capabilities, I vied and was elected as the first-ever woman representative of Laikipia County. During this time, I had the structural capacity to influence more change such as drilling five boreholes to address the underlying causes of conflict in some areas such as Doldol, Kia Ndege, Naibrom, and installing water pipes to supply water for 9 kms at the Makutano area in the Ngobit ward. I am very pleased to see all those water provision facilities fully operational to date. I expanded table-banking opportunities to allow over 1000 women from across the county to be trained on money saving, borrowing and investment and we joined the Joywo women organization; I was able to work closely with the national government to ensure adequate deployment of security personnel to conflict prone areas; I was able to sponsor over 700 children going to school through bursaries; and I provided sanitary towels to every school-going girl in the Laikipia North constituency. Education is important to get people out of poverty.

Within the work I am doing, there are critical recommendations that ought to be considered.

The women in Laikipia and across the continent critically need peace because we are disproportionately affected by instability as women and girls are sexually abused during crises. We are pushed into Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugee camps to live in precarious situations.

Women and girls need education. Education exposes us and gives us the ability to meaningfully participate in all sectors for instance as mediators in conflict situations.