I am listening to participatory human rights theatre performed by youth from the Pumwani slum district, here at the 2007 edition of the World Social Forum. 60,000 people live in Pumwani, which is one of the many slum belts surrounding Nairobi. A total of 2,1 million people live in the Nairobi slums, according to UNDP statistics.
In Punwami there are 35 toilets in total, and four computers. No internet is available, and the computers are mostly used for playing CDs with preventive HIV information. According to the youth activists I speak to, there is a wish to have more computers, and internet access, and they plan to use their latest donation for one extra computer. They have no idea when internet will be an option.
Pumwani, like the other slum areas, is characterised by extreme poverty, pollution, health problems and crimes. Since the area is not being recognised as a city, but rather as an informal settlement, the government is not providing basic services like sanitation or garbage removal. There are also no schools directly located in the area, and many of the kids do not have the resources to attend the community schools nearby.
Para-legals help give back respect and dignity to Pumwani slum
There are a number of church organisations and non-governmental organisations doing projects in the slum. One of them is St. Johns Community Center, which is home to an informal school, and to a number of self-help groups. Walking around Pumwani with a couple of volunteers from St. Johns, I visit a small para-legal office.
Para-legals are people who receive basic training in human rights, in order to give legal advice to other people in the community. There are 80 para-legals in Pumwani, working on 4 persons shifts, every day of the week. “Many people don’t know they have rights. So when the police come and mishandle people, no one would know that this is not okay. Or if a man beats up his wife, she would have nowhere to turn to. This is changing now. More and more people get a sense of their rights, and they come to us for help. We have even had cases in the formal legal system,” says James, a young para-legal volunteer.
“It’s also about giving people a sense of self-respect and dignity. The police can tell the difference when they come here now. They are starting to respect us.”
Human rights cities
Back at the forum, I run into Walter Lichem, an Austrian ambassador who was one of the active human rights supporters during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS – Tunisia 2005). Lichem is here promoting human rights cities, which was an initiative that came out of the UN decade on Human Rights Education (1990 to 2000). One of the other slum areas, Korogocho, has just declared itself a human rights city, he tells me. The initiative comes from a local youth network living in Korogocho.
Declaring your city a human rights city basically means that the community comes together and defines a number of human rights standards that its inhabitants wish to achieve for the area in a certain amount of time. For instance, reduced police violence, increased access to primary school, better economic standards, improved access to health services and so on.
Actually, there are quite a lot of workshops amplifying the voices about slum problems at the forum. There are also a number of participatory performances where slum residents use music and theatre to involve and debate with the audience.
However, there is also critique and demonstrations stressing that the forum is too expensive, especially the food and drinks sold there, thereby excluding many local people from participating. On the last day, one of the food tents is taken over by a large group of local kids, who run in and eat all the food within half an hour. The police is present, but perhaps because of the many internationals and the big amount of media and journalists, they do not intervene. And most people seem moved, rather than offended, by the sight of the many hungry kids filling their stomachs.
”Finally a real social action,” says a French media activist, sitting next to me.
