The African Union (AU) has over 40 legal instruments, policy standards and decisions some of which Kenya has committed to and is at different stages of signing, ratifying, domesticating or adhering to. These instruments cover a wide area of freedoms, rights and aspirations including on human rights and democratic governance, agriculture and conservation of nature and natural resources, health strategy and access to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria services, on rights and welfare of women in Africa, on rights and welfare of the child and on rights of the youth.

The Kenyan government having over the years committed to implement some of these legal instruments, policy standards and decisions, has made a promise to its citizens that needs to be fulfilled. In fact the president of Kenya is obligated by the Constitution of Kenya 2010, in his annual State of the Nation Address to parliament to inform the Kenyan people through their representatives on the status of implementation of these continental commitments, among other international ones.

How is Kenya fairing in fulfilling these promises? A report, ‘2013 State of the Union Report’, commissioned by Fahamu, a pan-African a civil society organisation that works to promote social justice in Kenya and Africa based here in Kenya, states that Kenya has made progress in ratification and implementation of AU treaties and protocols particularly ratification of thirteen out of sixteen that were the basis of the study. More specifically, in a recent study conducted by Dechert LLP, the Lawyer’s Circle, Oxfam, Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR), FIDA Kenya, and published by Fahamu, on the level of compliance by Kenya to the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (2003) ratified by Kenya in October 2010, showed that while the government has taken systematic steps to address gender discrimination and inequality through pro-women’s rights legislation, significant challenges and gaps are still a barrier to full implementation of the protocol.

Why are AU legal instruments, policy standards and decisions significant to Kenyans and Africans? Since the Jubilee government came to power in 2013 there has been a noticeable new shift towards a more pan-African approach. In deed in his inauguration speech on 9 April 2013 President Uhuru Kenyatta begun by welcoming other Africans present by stating that the their presence was an indication of the commitment to the Pan-African agenda. Only recently (9 January 2015) the government announced that about 170 Kenyan health workers were being sent to Sierra Leone and Liberia, as part of an African Union mission to contain Ebola in West Africa. When making the announcement, Amb. Amina Mohamed, Kenyan Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said that the deployment was part of Kenya’s commitments towards the spirit of African Unity. Kenya has also committed a significant number of troops to the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). From this, it appears the Jubilee government takes its AU commitments very seriously and has will to fulfil its obligations towards this continental body. However the AU is most significant to Kenyan and African lives because it is born out of the pan-African movement, a movement that came abut from the struggle to restore the dignity and humanity of the African people. In Accra, on 6 March 1997 Tanzania’s founding president, Julius Nyerere in a speech said the following on the formation of the OAU/AU:

‘For centuries, we had been oppressed and humiliated as Africans. We were hunted and enslaved as Africans, and we were colonized as Africans. The humiliation of Africans became the glorification of others. So we felt our Africanness. We knew that we were one people, and that we had one destiny regardless of the artificial boundaries, which colonialists had invented.’

The struggle for political, social economic and cultural rights is a struggle for people’s dignity. The AU has evolved to become more than just a union of heads of states, to a union of African people, with a vision of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in global arena.”

What is My African Union, Be the voice for Africa? Fahamu, two year ago, joined a campaign, State of the African Union campaign (SOTU), that sought to sensitize and build knowledge of citizens on the role of the AU with the aim of fostering public demand for implementation of AU decisions at Country. The ultimate goal for this campaign is to promote an active citizenship, effective national governance and the realization of the fundamental freedoms and human rights contained in various key AU policy standards and legal instruments.

With the slogan My African Union, Be the voice of Africa, we will this year 2015 be holding activities towards informing Kenyan citizens on these rights and freedoms and empowering them to claim these rights, which as stated above are promises that the Kenyan government has made to its citizens.

Among the activities we have organized are debates and discussions in various universities and collages with the country, debates and discussions on social media, concerts for musicians and other artist, radio talks, publications and TV debates. All especially targeting youth. Watch out for us in the coming days.

* Mwangi Maina is a Programme Officer, State of The African Union Project, Fahamu.

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