International labour organisation

Chapter four

Chapter Five

There is denial of the existence of the vice. This is normally backed by traditional norms –that children have to learn to work so as to be self dependent. Prostituion, worldwide is a shameful and attached with lots of stigma and its is very difficult for parents who have suffered destitution as a consquence of drought or conflicts, to accept that child labour exist. The Indigenous communities, particularly the elderly bracket, have increasingly found it a challenge to understand and accept that traditional insitutions and goverance are falling apart or have limited capcity to address new emerging challenges andn thus, they would require new strategies and mechanisms to address these challenges.

There is very low awareness on child Labour, both at the community and at the civil society level. Organizations fear of getting into loggerhead with communities and as such loosing credibility as a community sensitive organization. They are not aware of the standards and local laws that protect children. The Government has employed a strategy of arrest and prosecute parents who offer their children to work intstead of engaging dialogue with the corncened the communities.

FGM and early marriages and circumcision. There is conflict on the definition of child through the eye of an indigenous community and formal and legal system. Traditional system uses initiation ceremonies as a cutline between childhood and adulthood. This makes it difficult to identify and support the affected children, as the community does not necessarily, consider them as children. A case in point is the initiative of Dupoto e Maa, in Kajiado District, initiative on child labour and how it presents diverse challenges as far as education is concerned, the Kajiado Maasai remain largely ignorant on the issues. The community tend to look at the short benefits accrued from child labour other than long term benefits derived from education. The community cultural perception and understanding of child labour is still entrenched in the life learning, life skills, cultural values and norms – that forms and informs the larger part of the community. It has to be noted that livestock management and production are very expensive, veterinary drugs, labour and other inputs, not to mention pasture and water, are hard to come by and pastoralists are trying all possible means to cut down the costs. Unfortunately, most if not, all find it difficult and/or impossible to cut costs on other factors other labour, and they do this by retaining their own children to look after the livestock. It would be said that limited livelihoods among the pastoralists is increasingly making the pastoralists walk on a tight rope in terms of decision making with regard to survival avenues. Short term survival options are competing with long terms benefits.

There is a lack of appropriate and relevant education and learning opportunities coupled with lack of awareness or minimal awareness on child labour – including legal as well as social aspects and community understanding of the issues involved, there makes it difficlut to addresses the undeerlying causes and/or challenges posed by child labour . There is a weak knowledge and institutional base to address child labour among the pastoralists. Few organizations have knowledge and experience working with pastoralists on other broader issues let alone child labour. The IPOs themselves have broad practical expriences on IKP but lack the technical know how and other resources to intervene in a meaningful way.

The increasing poverty trends among the ITPs will continue to hamper efforts to address child labour. While child labour is one overriding factor that contributes to child labour by excluding children from education, abusing their rights to childhood, good health and against exploitation and thus, reducing their chances of realising their individual and communal full potential, the community perceives child labour a means to “bring food to the table and consequently and reduce poverty”. This view is held strong and will require concerted, collective, strategic efforts and considerable amount of time to be invested on a longer term basis in awareness building.
There are different manifestations of poverty and all of which must be addressed. The cultural dimension of poverty for instance among the Maasai is very different from the World Bank acclaimed and monetary understanding of the same. Lack of children is considered, among other factors, as the foundation of poverty. Having livestock, good social relations, children and respecting and adhering to cultural values and practices is a strong indicator of lack of perceived poverty among the Maasai- “Enkishon” – a general well being. Interestingly, the same household would consider itself as poor simply because they have money and do not wear mainstream clothes.
Considering this view of well being or poverty into serious consideration, it then emerges that, having wealth among the Maasai can also contribute to increased child labour and non participation to education by Maasai children. Most well to do households, tend to hold their children from attending school and would rather invest in the God-given well being commonly referred by community as “Enkishon Enkai”(God Grace). The Maasai indigenous notion of poverty can be summarised by this statement by an elder during a constitutional review process in 2005; “the land is the heart of the Maasai community and the cow is its soul”.
It then can be concluded that poverty is widespread among the ITPs but it is not a reason sufficient enough and by itself, for non participation of a majority of Maasai children in school. In most circumstances it is the children of those without livestock, and such poor, who tend to work hard to ensure that their children attend school.

7.5 National Policies- Education policies

The curriculum is not sensitive, relevant, and appropriate and is in conflicts with indigenous peoples lifestyles. These tend to encourage drop out, poor performance and disinterest. The national policy frameworks has still not accepted that traditional livelihoods are part of Kenyan social and economic mainstay and as such, existing and evolved policies still continue to undermine pastoralism as a legitimate form of livelihood. This has made it difficult for ITPs who consider most of the policies as detrimental to their livelihood and social life.

Natural resource based conflict are on the increase among and more Indigenous communities will be driven out of their lifestyles and homelands – living them as destitutes and children will surely work

The frequent and unpredictable drought and its effects takes heavy toll on pastoralists’ livelihood. On a number of occastion the drought has been declared a National disaster and most rural communities; particularly the pastoralists are supported with food relief supplies . The way of social of life were disrupted, they lost over 67%²⁴ of their livestock and as a consequence, most they could not afford to pay school fees or even to provide the basic of necessities.
This led to the decline of enrolment, participation and performance among a number of schools. It is estimated that it will take close to 15 years for the pastoralists in Kenya to rebuild their livestock and livelihoods- if favourable conditions continue to apply. This highly unlikely as it is predicted that intermittent spells of are likely to drought and very minimal efforts are being undertaken national wide by the Government and other agencies to assist these communities.

It is therefore, be foreseen, that community contribution in education and support of school construction will be minimal, unless, alternatives approaches to income/wealth generation initiatives and deliberate initiatives to enable the pastoralists re-build their livelihood as a long term strategy to make them confident and able to contribute to education.

However, and as it stands now, more children of most affected households, will stream back to child labour, mostly as herds boys and the same is expected of girls, who will either be wedded of as strategy for the poor household to get dowry in form of livestock and as such use the opportunity to rebuild their stock or drop out of school in favour of the Boy child- who most Maasai household continue to argue that, is great value as compared to a girl.


7.7 Limited disaggregated data and information about the pastoralists

There is need to have data on IPs children and communities so as to have deep understanding on the extent and trends of the problem. Due to the non existence of such data, it has been difficult to ascertain the severity of the problem. The IPOs can diffuse these problems by collecting

The selling of Land among the Maasai of Kajiado and the Leasing of the Land on the periphery on the Maasai Mara by the Narok Maasai has reached its threshold and a number of households, particularly children, find themselves having been disinherited and dispossessed of their land and resource rights by their parents- mostly fathers. The tendency is that the parents (mostly fathers) sell the land (through brokers) and engage in drinking sprees and end up being conned by commercial sex workers, relatives and land buying brokers and companies. Most of these men are illiterate and have no basic knowledge on land selling laws, procedure and valuing. They end up being conned and due to frustrations, shame and ridicule they end up in urban centres to escape the reality of the village life. The children and the rest of the families are evicted. These children end up working. This will continue to be a single most challenge on a daily basis among the Kajiado Maasai.

The number of children orphaned by hiv/aids is increasing and so is the number of children who are working to be able to take care of their siblings and with the social disruptions of traditional livelihoods, the social safety nets have been distorted and weakened to the level that relatives tend to use orphans to look after their livestock, while their own kids go to school.