The Horn of Africa Institute has conducted several engagements in Isiolo County to address gaps in the Isiolo County 2025-2025 Gander policy.
Thirty women leaders selected from women groups across the four sub-counties of Isiolo were recently engaged in mainstreaming various gender issues that were identified as obstructing the swift implementation of the Isiolo Gender Policy.
In a project dubbed “Promotion of Women Empowerment and Rights” (POWER), fifteen pastoralists’ women leaders, and ten Isiolo county representatives from various departments, were also engaged as part of a task force that dissected into the barriers hindering the swift implementation of the gender proposals captured in the policy document.
According to Ms. Pasacalia Ogutu, who is the program manager of the project, the main objective was to center on sensitizing targeted communities, the legislators, and different stakeholders on the gaps identified in the way communities understand and interpret gender roles and rights.
Ms. Pascalia said that it was important for duty bearers to understand and appreciate the need to incorporate the gender approach even in the sharing of county government resources.
With the push for the implementation of the policy gearing up, Mr. Thuranira, who is the county solicitor helped participants to understand the legal frameworks surrounding the policy proposals and approaches to their actualization and realization.
Gender department Director, Madam Madina explained that many stakeholders were now in agreement on the need for FastTracking initiatives to pave the way for the Gender Policy 2021-2025 to be adopted as a gender bill by the county Assembly.
Madina said that the gender bill could help to address vices such as the social exclusion of women, participation in development agendas such as climate change, limited leadership appointments for women in decision-making spaces, and limited access to better healthcare for many women in the county.
The program which is supported through the African Women Development Fund, also aims at capacity-building rural women in Isiolo on awareness of their rights and how to take charge of their eloping opportunities due to gender stereotyping.
Njuguna an assistant county commissioner who took part in the training said he was impressed by the attempts to provide motivation for women and sensitize them to access funding from government sources like the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF), and other development enterprises.
Njuguna also called for the institutionalization of gender experts within the disciplined forces to entrench positive gender-sensitive practices among officers that would in turn lead to bettering of service delivery.
He explained that the protection of the rights and dignity of women and girls was paramount and that the program had come at a time when society needed it most.
Prevention of harmful practices like child marriages, beading, and female genital mutilation was identified by participants who were mostly women who accepted that such practices were still pre-dominant in their society.
Madam Norah a women leader said practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) are still being conducted in remote villages where there is no network and few people have formal education. These she said are major cultural hurdles that face women which she hoped that the bill would soon address.
The need for the establishment of Gender-Based Violence and Victims Support in police stations, SGBV centers as safe temporary homes, the creation of a County toll-free 24/7 telephone hotline and online service for victims/ survivors of SGBV, and free legal assistance to victims of SGBV were also given prominence during the sensitizations.