KENYA: AMECEA Justice Peace and Caritas Concludes Election Monitoring in Kenya
and Caritas election monitoring team
The AMECEA Justice Peace and Caritas department has concluded its second elections observation mission in just one year. Having successfully undertaken election observation in Zambia last year (2016) under the auspices of the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops, AMECEA JPC engaged with different partners and with the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops to not only observe elections in Kenya, but also to serve as a cross-learning platform for other national conferences.
The mission that worked with the Kenyan conference was drawn from Uganda, Zambia, South Sudan, sister regional conference the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA) and was joined by the AMECEA JPC staff. The mission team was distributed across Kenya covering Nyanza, Nairobi, Upper and Lower Eastern.
The mission noted that there was a smooth operation of the elections enabled by the electronic mechanisms.
However, some key considerations were proposed. First and most importantly the mission felt that voter education needs to be improved and this should be a continuous process and not just to the run-up to the elections.
Secondly the mission felt that with the high voter turnout being experienced in Kenya, it is crucial that the polling stations be increased, to ensure voters are not discouraged by the long queues.
The mission also strongly recommended that the capacity for the Catholic Church in electioneering processes, not only in the AMECEA region but also across Africa, be increased through investments in systems and human resource. This will provide the Bishops with facts of elections and leadership in Africa and also voice of reason specially to counter any election malpractices that may arise.
The mission also recommended the AMECEA Secretariat to keep leveraging the capacity in the region as was done with the Kenyan experience receiving input from Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops and especially for countries, which are struggling with the electioneering processes. AMECEA JPC was also challenged to ensure that there is a database created for learning purposes and that a report on the electioneering process should be presented to the plenary of Bishops in Ethiopia in 2018.
As a department, AMECEA Justice Peace and Caritas expressed gratitude to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) for providing the resources for different activities of the department that have allowed this mission to take place.
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By Antony Mbandi, AMECEA Justice Peace and Caritas Department
