Young activist fights against violations
If anyone would have told a younger Muthuri Kathure that he would be a human rights champion, he would have never believed it. He spent most of his childhood in the church compound playing football and serving as an altar boy, and therefore the automatic thing would be to become a Catholic priest. He admired the work and life of his parish priests. Beyond performing their liturgical duties, the priests would provide humanitarian support to the community, something that he wanted to do.
“That is how I ended up in a seminary (St Joseph’s Junior Seminary in Kitui county) after my primary school education at Waberi Primary in Wajir. Later on in secondary school, I dropped the thought and believed I would make a great diplomat only for my career teacher to advise me to consider the law,” intimates Muthuri.
Standing for what is right
Today, the 29-year-old currently works with Article 19 Eastern Africa as the Senior Programme Officer- Civic Space. Article 19 Eastern Africa is an affiliate of Article 19, a global organisation that works to protect Freedom of Expression and Access to Information across the globe. He leads the organisation’s civic space intervention in the region, including on the right to peaceful assembly, gender and sexuality and participation. He also provides oversight to the digital rights and policy programme.
In his journey as a human rights activist, he has had many achievements, including being selected for the International Visitors Leadership Programme by the US Department of State in 2019, he was honoured as one of the 14 men of Amnesty by Amnesty International Kenya in 2020 and 2021, he was among finalists of the Top 35 under 35 in the Human Rights Category. He also serves as a member of the Oversight Group at Africa Internet Rights Alliance (AIRA) and recently, he was selected as a youth delegate to the World Congress on Abolition of the death penalty that will be happening in November 2022.
As Muthuri shares, he found himself in leadership positions since his childhood. He always stood against ill-treatment. This gave him opportunities to influence decisions and advocate against any form of injustice in whatever form and different spaces including in school and at home. “I was more aware of my journey during my formative years at the seminary. I got in trouble with the teachers because of were vocal, especially when the school’s administration would introduce unfair practices. In my first month at Mt Kenya University, I led a protest against the institution’s decision to transfer law students from the university’s affordable hostels to expensive private hostels. I drafted a memorandum and together with a handful of first-year law students, we walked into the vice-chancellor's office to protest; we weren’t successful though. Later on, I ended up being a student leader, a position that allowed me to advocate for reforms including pushing for Muslim prayer spaces on the campus as Christians had their spaces. I pushed for affordable cafeteria and decentralisation of power from the main campus to other campuses,” says the trained lawyer.
Automatically, he was seen as a stubborn and radical student leader by the administration, but a darling to his fellow students. It is on campus that he started getting involved in the “mainstream” human rights work. He volunteered for organisations such as Transparency International, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurist (ICJ) Kenya in organising inter-university engagements on Freedom of Expression. While at it, he also grabbed any training opportunities for young people/students by civil society organisations.
Motivation and goals
“As my classmates got excited about how they would make great litigation, conveyance and criminal lawyers, I kept talking of how I would go back to Northern Kenya and work with non-governmental organisations. After completing my studies, I took up a job in a law firm. The dark suits and corridors of courts did not excite me and so after a month, I resigned. Fortunately, I landed an internship at the Refugee Consortium of Kenya and I never looked back. I have worked on different human rights issues including refugees and other forced migrants, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning) LGBTIQ+), abolition of the death penalty, criminal justice and penal reform and now on freedom of expression and access to information,” shares Muthuri.
The greatest influence on his journey as human rights defender as he intimates is his family background. Growing up in Wajir, he had a firsthand experience with marginalisation. He grew up around many humanitarian and human rights actors and loved what they were doing for the community. “On a personal level, I wore the shoe of being a minority in a Somali- Muslim dominated region and to some extent, I would relate to the minority. And like many other young people from the Northern Frontier Districts, it took me two years to get my Identification Card after vigorous vetting processes. These are some of the experiences that shaped my journey in human rights,” says the new Programmes Manager.
One of his best moments as a human rights champion was when the Supreme Court abolished the mandatory death penalty. Working and interacting with people on death row then, he very well knows what this meant to them.
His worst moments are of course, whenever he comes across news and/or incidents of human rights violations. “The beauty of being a human rights defender is being able to bring about positive change no matter how small. It is very fulfilling to see changes on issues that you have been part no matter how small your role was. A good example is the implementation of the Plea Agreement and Diversion Policies, which I was part of its initial piloting at a time when many were not for the idea,” he intimates.
Standing up for human rights, he shares also comes with its fair challenges. For instance; change is gradual and human rights advocacy takes time. Some of the policy/legal practices that he would want to see change might take time. This can be quite frustrating.
As part of his activism, he also regularly writes Op-Eds on different human rights and policy issues in the local dailies. Human rights advocacy is all he sees himself doing even in the future.
“I will continue enhancing people’s voices, passing the power of law to the people at the lowest, expanding civic space and advocating for policy and legal changes and general human rights campaigning,” he says in ending.
