This mapping has also shown that most of the areas directly affected by election violence are within the low and middle income areas. This is mostly within the slums, and low income neighboring estates like Dandora, kayole Githurai, etc. These mirrors exactly the areas of high confrontations during the 1992, 1997, 2007, and 2017 election cycles. These instances of disturbance and violence during the electioneering period derail the country’s economy; property worth millions of shillings is destroyed, businesses, from micro, small. Medium and even big companies operations stall, negatively affecting thousands of livelihoods.
Within areas of informality, where the informal employees work and live the violence is more pronounced, a situation that would be associated to several dynamics like poverty, high Illiteracy levels, misuse of the unemployed youths by politicians among other issues. It is in the backdrop of these challenges that the Informal Sector Federation of Kenya (ISFEK) come up with the “Kenya ni sisi, na Sisi ni Kenya” campaign to run pre and post 2022 election, directly targeting those in the informal sector and informal settlements within the major towns in Kenya.
This is because members within the informal sector are used to be part of this violence, especially the unemployed and underemployed youths; our members within the informal sector are also the first ones to lose massively when election violence occurs. Lives and livelihoods are lost within the sector, women, girls and children being more venerable always bear the brunt of the skirmishes. ‘Kenya ni Sisi, na Sisi ni Kenya’ is a pre and post-election integrated peace building campaign strategy to forestall, enhance and sustain cohesion and peace among communities within the informal sector, informal settlements and across all other segments of our country.
ISFEK campaign is based on a well-structured integrated communication narrative that seeks to promote and encourage thoughts of peace and harmony for the sake of progress among the Kenyan population in our target areas. Our massage is designed to emphasize on acts of humanity, show the importance of peace for the people and their economic activities. It further moves to paint the picture of anxiety and uncertainty when peaceful coexistence is disturbed; it further encourages the people to avoid disinformation that may sow mistrust and chaos among them.
Our massaging is passed through personal interaction by the community members themselves who are ISFEK members, neighbours to neighbours, friends to friends etc., and at residency areas, work areas at bus stops, boda boda shades etc., when possible passing fliers that advocate for a united community and country.
