Human rights violations happen when citizens choose to be silent

Once again, human rights violations scarred many lives and tested our national conscience over 2025. However, several victories remind us, our hope survives not as a passive emotion but as the consequence of our personal vigilance and public action.

Authoritarian regimes around the world deliberately defunded or degraded all but the performative optics of multi-lateralism and the UN. Despite 23 years of the African Union, African states are incapable of ending conflict in Sudan and Ukraine or reversing climate chaos that stalks both people and planet.

Lawfare against opposition parties across East Africa have eviscerated the power of electoral democracies. Elections are now won before any citizen can get to a ballot box. Digital technology with the capacity to expand civic participation and deepen public transparency has been restricted to divisive, toxic and hate-based platforms. “US or us first” national security and foreign policies prolong deadly conflicts for millions and the most significant rights recession and the global leadership vacuum in eighty years.

At home, despite months of calm, still as many Kenyans were killed exercising their right to assembly in June and July of 2024. The death of late whistle-blower Albert Ojwang’, fisherman Brian Odhiambo and state abductions of Boniface Mwangi, Agather Atuhaire, Nicholas Oyoo and Bob Njagi and others alerted us to a new and worrying trend. Being held in custody and police stations at home or abroad are no longer safe spaces. With no significant movement on justice or compensation, we must continue to press the administration, ODPP and KNCHR for truth and accountability.

State paid online harassment, censorship, and surveillance reflected a dangerous slide toward digital authoritarianism. Citizens must press technology companies and regulators to adopt human rights compliant policies to protect digital freedoms and stop state-sponsored trolling ahead of 2027.

Yet 2025 was not only a year of violations. Championed by Senator Crystal Asige, the Persons with Disabilities Act offers several freedoms including the right of all wheelchair users and other persons with disabilities to access public transport, public online and offline spaces. It also introduced tax incentives for inclusive employment. January’s High Court ruling decriminalising suicide enables survivors to seek counselling without fear of arrest in honour of the late Charity Muturi SC, a transgender person, secured a court order protecting all Kenyans against non-consensual and un-supervised strip searches and forced medical examinations while in police custody. Unlike Tanzania, our courts agreed with seven civic organisations and have outlawed blanket internet shutdowns. Two years of public resistance to excessive taxation and cuts in health and education cuts highlight Kenya’s greatest human rights risk namely, inequality, hunger, and despair. Without strong social protection and universal access to essential services, Kenya Kwanza cannot tackle the roots of unrest. These victories are but a few of those that didn’t hit the headlines. Reported or not nationally, they all have one thing in common. They were achieved by either citizens or civic organisations.

As 2025 ends, the fear we feel about the future mirrors the level of action we are personally taking or not. The more of us that act together, the faster we can secure prosperity, dignity, and safety for all within our borders.

The identity-based divisions we feel, are manufactured to control us all. Rights violations are deliberate consequences. They are driven by the harmful decisions of a few and our silence in the face of them. Authoritarians don’t need laws to strip freedoms. They only need to shape mindsets that make us surrender them. Our silence is engineered. As the UN urges us, like brushing our teeth, rights activism must become an everyday habit. Truphena Muthoni’s powerful tree-hugging protest last month matters, but so does our ability to act together to safeguard our Constitution.

Enfranchising 12 million Kenyans to vote before 2027 elections is now critical. So is building a national conscience and our collective capabilities to protect and promote human rights everywhere we are.
Happy New Year everyone.

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