Nairobi February 26, 2020 – Abdulkarim Adan has lived in one of Kenya’s harshest environments in the northern arid and semi-arid region for 52 years. He has seen many droughts that have for decades left thousands of people without enough food and killing hundreds of precious livestock- their sole source of livelihoods. But the recent sequence of attacks by Alshabaab insurgents targeting non-local teachers working in counties in this region has made him question the future of his pastoral community, with education seen as a stepping stone out of extreme poverty.
Wearing a white waistcoat and holding a greyish walking stick, he sits on a bunch of fuelwood in the village of Halugho, a constellation of rickety shelters fashioned from tree twigs and sticks, and a few ridged iron-sheets structures.
Halugho is about a five-hour drive, some 250km on bone-clanking tracks from Garissa town, where men cluster to buy the mild stimulant khat as goats and camels wander by.
Kenya’s northern expanse is a classic illustration of how tackling climate change and attaining sustainable development – as defined by the UN global goals are two sides of the same coin.
Caught as it is in spans of politically-driven historical economic marginalization, educating its children appears to be the appropriate route out of poverty for inhabitants of Garissa, Mandera, and Isiolo and Wajir counties.
“I have in mind so many things,” says Abdulkarim. “Children should be sent to school in order to obtain income-generating skills. Each child needs to have access to quality education and access to trained teachers. But now, all you see here are education premises with no teachers.”
On the night of January 13, 2020, armed militants believed to be from neighboring Somalia raided Kamuthe Primary School in Garissa, where they killed three non-Muslim teachers, abducting a Muslim one and leaving another teacher wounded before proceeding to set fire to Kamuthe police post and destroying a communication mast.
Kenya’s teacher employer, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) bowed to pressure from teachers’ unions to have non-local non-Muslim teachers transferred from the regions perceived to be at risk of attacks from the Alshabaab insurgents and started transferring the teachers early this month.
With the move to transfer teachers having the potential to paralyze the education system in the region, local political leaders came strongly to protest the motion calling for an urgent meeting to resolve the standoff.
Aden Duale who is Garissa town Member of Parliament and leader of the majority in the National Assembly told Ubuntu Times, “We will spearhead sustainable solutions especially that which seeks to curb the killings of non-local teachers working in schools within the northeastern region.”
For locals, like Abdulkarim, attacks targeted at educational institutions such as schools and hospitals have a direct impact on the vulnerable, mostly women and children.
Recently, local leaders led by Governors Ali Korane of Garissa and Mohamed Abdi of Wajir threatened to sue TSC for its move to transfer non-local tutors from the region owing to insecurity, adding that it would include seeking to have the commission stripped of powers to transfer teachers and duty taken over by county governments.
Akelo Misori, Secretary-General of the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), while supporting the role of teacher transfer bestowed on the devolved unit of government, reiterates that tutors’ security was a priority.
“We stand with the TSC’s move to prioritize the safety of tutors in the northeastern region,” Misori told Ubuntu Times in a telephone interview, calling on leaders in the region to shy away from blaming victims and instead play a role in ending insecurity and terror attacks in their locality.
A 2018 armed militants attack at Qarsa Primary School in Wajir East that led to the death of three people, including two teachers saw a mass exodus of teachers.
In this year’s early January a dawn attack at Saretho Boarding Primary School, situated in Dadaab saw a teacher and a child lose lives, leading to the immediate closure of the school.
In the new era of sustainable development, where all countries are expected to implement a universal development agenda, the Kenyan government need to be held to account for human rights abuses affecting a significant part of their young population, as well as failure to provide adequate protection to which children are entitled under the convention on the rights of the child.
Under the international humanitarian, law, schools are protected civilian objects and therefore benefit from the humanitarian principles of distinctions and proportionality.
Direct physical attacks and closure of these institutions as a result of direct threats have since 2011 been added as triggers of inclusion on the list of the Secretary General’s parties to conflict committing grave violations against children in armed conflict. Attacks on schools during conflict is one of the six grave violations identified by the UN Security Council.
Statistics indicate that over 2,000 non-local teachers already left the northern region since 2015 with the government’s efforts to replace them not bearing fruits, worsened by recent tactics by militants to attack non-native tutors, who possess the required teacher qualification.
The National Council for Nomadic Education (NACONEK), an agency tasked with promoting education in nomadic areas of northeastern Kenya routes for recruitment of curriculum assistance as well as employing local teachers graduating from teacher training colleges.
“The government ought to reduce entry grade level of learners who wants to pursue teaching in teachers training institutions, and retake teacher retirees aged 65 years and below from the region to curb shortage,” Harun Yusuf, NACONEK Chief Executive Officer told Ubuntu Times.
Wilson Sosion, Secretary-General of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) says the government’s delay in moving in to seek a reliable solution to the education crisis in the northeastern region is a big disservice to residents of the region.
“The government’s dalliance is a big disservice and an affront to the constitutional right of children to access education as outlined in the UN 2030 Agenda on sustainable development goals,” Sosion told in an interview.
According to Sosion, teachers must be created from children of the Somali community and equitably derived Somali clans with a mean grade of D (+) and above and registered as untrained teachers and immediately deployed immediately to class while undergoing in-service training.
In 2015, armed Alshabaab attackers raided Garissa University, leading to the death of 147 students, an attack that shocked the country’s education and security system.