By Kamau Ngugi
Executive Director
In 2024, the CIVICUS Monitor downgraded Kenya’s civic space standing to “repressed in its annual rating. The rating, detailed in the report, People Power Under Attack 2024′, followed the govermment’s brutal crackdown on nationwide Gen Z protests. The government’s violent response led to the deaths of 60 unarmed protesters, over 1,200 arrests of demonstrators and over 130 persons missing since the onset
of the protests. Those targeted for abductions by suspected security agents were primarily online mobilisers, government critics and human rights defenders. Kenya risks sinking even further on the human rights/civic space index associated with failed states. This year’s state of repression climaxed in June, when the police turned the first-year anniversarу comprising of peaceful vigils and commemoration marches for the victims of June 2024 into a despicable display of state-sanctioned police brutality.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Police Reform Working Group documented 19 fatalities, 531 injurics, 15 enforced disappearances, 179 arrests and five cases of sexual and gender-based violence. Many of the fatalitics and injurics were inflicted by gunshots, sharp and blunt objects attributed to the police and armed goons.
At the UN Human Rights Council’s fourth Universal Periodic Review of the state of human rights in May, a list of recommendations to make Kenya a more human rights-respecting state were diplomatically provided by state partics. They called for respect for the right to life, accountability for police misconduct, respect for the freedom of assembly, association and information including the right of
civil society, human rights defenders and media to operate unhindered to hold the government to account without reprisals.The state must not squander the hopes of Kenyans forabetter country. To build a prosperous nation, we must tap the potential of our hardworking youth and divest from greed, bravado and rawpower.
The article was published in the Star Newspaper on 18th JULY, 2025