WESTERN KENYA PEACE INITIATIVE – CHEPYUK WARD, KOPSIRO, BUNGOMA COUNTY
It was March 9th — International Women’s Day — and the Maranatha Church in Bondeni was full. One hundred and fifty-five people had gathered, mobilized through the office of the Deputy County Commissioner, from three sub-locations in Kopsiro. The occasion was a public baraza: an open civic education forum on the rights of women and girls.
ADS Western’s Western Kenya Peace Initiative had intentionally timed this gathering to coincide with International Women’s Day—not for symbolism alone, but because the issues on the table were urgent. Land inheritance disputes, GBV, limited female representation in decision-making, and the quiet violence of cultural practices that stripped women of rights they were legally guaranteed these were not distant policy problems. They were the lived reality of women sitting in that room.
The forum moved between four themes: the role of faith in promoting peace; how youth could champion gender equality; how women could lead peacebuilding rather than simply endure conflict; and how culture could become a vehicle for women’s protection rather than their vulnerability. Chiefs, the DCC, a lands officer, clan elders, and women’s group leaders sat in the same room and spoke the same language.
One hundred and five people were reached directly, over 80% women. The significance of this was not lost on anyone: in a region where women are often the most affected by conflict and the least heard in its resolution, their presence at a civic forum with government officials was itself a form of advocacy.
The Baraza ended with a clear lesson: when communities are invited into dialogue, they come. When their voices are structured and their rights are named, they find the language to demand them.
