How does civil society in Kenya influence the sustainable development?

Civil society in Kenya engages in radical and transformative activism, human rights advocacy and social accountability for county and national governments, promoting good governance that is essential to achieving the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.

We collaborate with social movements to challenge political processes, informal powers and social norms, and include historically marginalized groups promoting the concept of the 2030 Agenda to "leave no one behind". We organize communities to advance civic spaces and people’s power with the bigger aim of transforming structures that violate human rights.

We champion a system that values human rights and social justice.

What kind of opposition does civil society meet in Kenya?

Shrinking civic spaces, with other words introduction of restrictive and oppressive laws that threat the civic space and organizing for human rights. Those challenging exploitative structures are faced with forced disappearance, extrajudicial killings and freezing of organization's accounts.

Where civil society organizations have championed progressive policies and laws, the government has been selective to implement sections of laws that advance the state agenda.

Shrinking donor funds are also an issue. Civils society organizations and majorly grassroots and social movements struggle to access funding needed to facilitate their organizing and work.

Has it become more difficult for civil society from Kenya to access relevant UN meetings and processes?

Yes. Many civil society organizations, specially the small ones, are faced with accreditation limitation for significant levels of consultation at the UN. UN culture does not provide environment for meaningful and effective engagement for these organizations, with capacity to be accredited. The costs of participating in UN meetings and processes in terms of visa processing, return-air ticket, accommodation, are equally costly for many organizations, no matter their size and ressurces.

The engagement in UN is more political than it should be transformative. UN dictates the agenda and runs the show. To some extent, I think engaging the civil society organizations, however progressive it may look, is meant to tick the boxes and exclude the purpose of engagement and genuine collaboration. Outcome from these processes are not people centered and do not speak to the lived experiences and realities of the larger majority of people who are left behind.

What can and should civil society in Norway do to help Rising for Greatness achieve its goals?

As a grassroots and young women-led organization in the Sub-Saharan Africa, working to change systems that are disenfranchising and impoverishing women and girls and undermining the realization of human rights, we continue to face a number of challenges, including competing for limited funding opportunities, which most of the time are given to bigger organizations. We struggle to access support to advance transformative change in our communities.

Civil society in Norway could offer Rising to Greatness the support we are seeking through the following ways:

• Providing funding to programs in form of unrestricted grants.
• Co-creating interventions and implementing programs as means to promoting partnership and access to funding.
• Link the organization to other donor communities with a shared transformative agenda.
• Provide exchange learning and capacity empowerment on human rights programming and governance advocacy and tools.
• Linke international students to our organization for research.