HEALTHY, SAFE AND SECURE ENVIRONMENT FOR OUR CHILDREN.
On 8th October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 48/13 recognizing that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right. In July 2022, the UN General Assembly declared access to a clean healthy environment a universal human right. Many countries including Kenya recognize and protect this right through their constitutions, national laws, judiciaries or ratification of international instruments. But children and persons with disabilities who contribute the least to environmental degradation and unsustainable development experience the worst threats to this human right.
In Kenya, economic development has produced mixed outcomes for society’s environmental safety and security. Many lives are lost in our highways, collapsing buildings, dams, and pollution to name but a few. In our built environments children have to contend daily with dangerous roads that have no footbridges or crossing places as they go to school, possible drowning where bridges are unsafe or non-existent, falls resulting from unsafe infrastructure especially high rise apartment buildings, inadequate, dilapidated classrooms, unhygienic sanitary facilities in schools and lack of accessible, safe and secure public spaces to play in. Development is for society and it must be seen to put human welfare at the forefront. For development to be sustainable and worth its cost, it needs to protect the environment and fulfill all human rights.
Let us listen to, and act upon the cries of our children.
