Publication by ISS PhD researcher Elizabeth Ngutuku and Assistant Professor Auma Okwany
Elizabeth Ngutuku and Auma Okwany published their chapter - Social Protection and Citizenship Rights of Vulnerable Children: A Perspective on Interventions by Non-state Actors in Western Kenya - in Non-state Social Protection Actors and Services in Africa. Governance below the State, edited by Nicholas Awortwi and Gregor Walter-Dorp and published by Routledge.
The book outlines research into the many small, informal community groups which deliver the majority of social protection services in Africa, but which are disqualified from official recognition, support or integration with state systems.
In their chapter, Ngutuku and Okwany discuss the Kenyan state's inability to provide the social protection services it guarantees to all citizens, including children. The authors state that social security is therefore often negotiated by citizens through the medition of civil society organizations. Non-state actors in the form of community based organizations, are therefore often the safety nets of first, or only, resort for vulnerable children.
They note that the services provided by these organizations need to go beyond being preventive, protective and palliative to being transformative in addressing the structural roots of child poverty and vulnerability.