A country at war with its children: How State hurts most vulnerable

Kenyan children are facing unprecedented budget cuts that threaten their well being as successive decisions expose the country’s vulnerable.

From serious budget reduction in the education sector to suspension of critical health programmes for school going children and an uncertain funding in higher education, the children are exposed.

And the latest blow, the government’s recent decision to defund and dissolve the Children Welfare Society of Kenya (CWSK) casts a dark shadow over the future of more than 700,000 vulnerable children.

Once a beacon of hope and protection, the Society, which has safeguarded children’s rights and welfare for 70 years now, faces the grim reality of its collapse.

With its funding slashed to zero from Sh900 million, the government’s plan to dismantle the institution is set to undo decades of progress in child protection.

The ripple effects are already being felt: homes in progress are threatened, children rescued from labour or the streets are at risk of abandonment, and the most vulnerable could be plunged into unimaginable peril.

When they appeared before the National Assembly’s Social Protection Committee on Tuesday, Chweya Ludeki, a member of the Child Welfare Society board of trustees told the MPs that the treasury cut the funding of CWSK to zero.

The Cabinet arrived at the decision to dissolve CWSK following President William Ruto’s directive for the merging of forty-two state corporations and dissolving of nine State corporations as part of fiscal consolidation efforts.

“I spent a whole twenty minutes trying to save the Society but there were a lot of questions that came up. It was however agreed that nobody would be losing their job,” Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua told the committee.

“After the meeting, I also wrote to the National Treasury to make funds available, but we have to be clever on how to save the agency. Even if that money came today, we cannot do the work they were doing,” Mutua added.

This new reality to defund and dissolve the agency may further expose thousands of Kenyan vulnerable children to homelessness, violence, dropping out of school, forced child labour or even death.

The history of Child Welfare Society of Kenya dates back to 1955 with existence that last 70 years.

In his presentation to the MPs, the CWSK trustee reported that the Society supports 700,000 children, mostly brought in by the Government for protection, medical care, education, and welfare.

This means vulnerable children rescued by police or infants abandoned by their mothers end up in institutions ran by the Society.

According to Chweya, CWSK received Sh900 million from government allocation, Sh19.6 million from well-wishers and Sh2.6 million from own income generating activities.

Chweya noted that the directive to discontinue Treasury funding would have consequences for the hundreds of thousands of children under its care and support.

CWSK argued that 206,000 children will be at risk of loss of life, abuse, malnutrition, neglect and even becoming potential victims of trafficking, gender-based violence and radicalisation.

Under their Emergency Preparedness and Response pillar, the Society cushions families and children against emergences.

The Society’s representative further told MPs that 3,000 infants and toddlers in children’s homes might be displaced hence exposing them to the risk of abuse, abandonment and deny them basic care.

The committee further heard that efforts to re-unite 2,700 lost and found children with their families or setting them up for adoption would be hampered.

Further, the society supports a total 171,000 children through primary, secondary and university and a lack of funding is set to jeopardize the same.

Some of the functions of the society include rescuing lost, abandoned and abused children, providing shelter and caring for neglected and abused children, preventing exposure to child labour among others.

The 171,000 vulnerable children under the Society’s Education and Skills Development programme will also be at risk of dropping out school, exacerbating lack of access to education, increased risks of child labour, early marriage, increased teenage pregnancies, and exploitation.

The decision to defund will also expose further 156,000 Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) supported through family strengthening and psychosocial support while 50,000 others covered under the Society’s Child Labour and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children programme will be at risk of being victims of the worst forms of child labour, child trafficking, teenage pregnancies, sexual exploitation and related abuse.

“In light of the above, I urge this committee to continue the funding of the Society for the reasons given. If funding is discontinued, the impact will be severe,” Ludeki told the committee.

Committee chair Alice Ng’ang’a pressed the CS to adopt a collaborative approach to ensure that funding to the society was restored, noting that it was unfortunate that the society would not receive funding from July next year.

“Here we are not dealing with infrastructure but the children of Kenya who are vulnerable. The members here understand what the Children Welfare Society has been doing. What now happens to the homes that are 85 per cent to completion and the 700,000 children under the welfare?” Ng’ang’a posed.

“Why does the government then send children to the society if it incapable to handle them? We need to be told what is going to happen to these children,” she added.

Seme MP James Nyikal sought to know what informed the Cabinet decision to defund and dissolve the agency and whether a serious impact assessment report was undertaken and the legal and structural relationship between the children’s department and the Children Welfare society.

“What is the purpose of taking from the right and giving to the left? It is very unfortunate that despite the society being in existence for the last 70 years, it is being scrapped by the stroke of a pen,” Kipkelion West MP Hillary Kiplangat, a committee member posed.

But this is not the first time the government is implementing policies that severely affect the future of the society’s most vulnerable, the children.

In the 2025/2026 financial year, the government has reduced education budget by Sh43.4 billion posing a financial crisis in the education sector.

With the reduction of education budget, key programmes, including free primary and secondary education are expected to be majorly affected.

Already the Principal Secretary for Basic Education Belio Kipsang has intimated that the funding gap may have a significant impact on school operations.

Speaking when he appeared before the National Assembly’s Education Committee, Dr Kipsang warned that about 982,127 students may miss out on capitation if the budget estimates are adopted.

Under the Free Day Secondary Education programme, the ministry required Sh76 billion for capitation but the government has only allocated Sh54 billion in the budget estimate, leaving a Sh22 billion gap.

Kipsang noted that the budget cuts will also affect primary schools with a Sh1.2 billion deficit, having been allocated Sh9.1 billion against the required Sh10.3 billion.

Children in junior secondary schools were also not spared in the government’s fiscal coverage cuts.

In junior secondary schools, there will be a Sh4 billion shortfall, as the budget team allocated Sh45.66 billion out of the required Sh49.72 billion.

“This goes against Chapter Four of the Constitution, which guarantees free and compulsory basic education,” Kipsang told the National Assembly’s Education Committee.

Students who sat their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) last year are still uncertain when they will join universities after High Court Judge Chacha Mwita declined to lift orders quashing Kenya Kwanza’s new university funding model, leaving more than 400, 000 students stranded.

In his decision, Justice Mwita upheld the judgment made on December 20 last year, which declared the funding model unconstitutional.

The application had been filed by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) seeking a temporary suspension of the court’s decision to allow the regularisation of the new funding model.

“Public interest is better served when everyone operates within the law. The new funding model was found to be inconsistent with the Constitution and existing laws, and suspending its nullification would only allow actions taken outside the legal framework to continue,” Justice Mwita ruled.

“I am not persuaded that there is merit in granting the application. Therefore, the application dated January 27, 2025, is declined and dismissed,” he added.

The contested funding model, introduced by President Ruto on May 3, 2023, sought to allocate financial aid to university and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) students based on their household income.

But the contestation now leaves more than 400,000 students uncertain of financing their higher learning.

President Ruto’s administration also scrapped EduAfya Medical Scheme in December 2023.

The scheme was started in 2018 by the then President Uhuru Kenyatta to provide quality education alongside comprehensive healthcare for students in public and private schools.

EduAfya scheme covered 3.4 million secondary school learners for medical expenses through the defunct National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF).

All the students in public secondary schools were eligible for the scheme even If their parents /guardians had alternative medical insurance.

Among the services covered under EduAfya included outpatient, inpatient, dental and optical cover, emergency road and air rescue, overseas treatment, accident cover and life cover.

Despite efforts by stakeholders in the education sector calling for reinstatement of the scheme, the government has remained adamant.

Instead, PS Kipsang last year directed all learners to register for Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF).  

“All school going children are required to register as dependents of their parents before school opening dates for the third term of 2024,” said Kipsang.

On January 31, Kipsang wrote to County and Sub-County directors of education directing them to emphasize on the need to register under SHA.

“The Act provides that every Kenyan, including children, shall register on SHA. In this regard, parents/guardians of school going children are required to register them on Social Health Authority, following the instructions,” read the letter in part.

The Ministry of Education set a deadline of February 28, 2025, for the registration to be completed.

In another blow, Social Health Authority Chief Executive Officer Robert Ingasira recently announced that teenage mothers will have to pay for insurance premiums.

This means that pregnant girls and teenage mothers below 18 years cannot be covered by their parents’ medical insurance.

Instead, Ingasira revealed that expectant teenagers would be subject to a means-testing to determine if they require financial assistance from the government or not.

The SHA chief executive argued that the programme is deliberately meant to help teenage mothers and to address the gap in the previous health scheme.

“The initial arrangement where teenage mothers were being identified using their mother’s ID created problems for us because some had mothers who were still within the childbearing age,” said the CEO during the signing of an MoU between SHA and the Murang’a County government.

“So you would find issues where a mother could reportedly be said to have given birth more than twice in a year just because her ID was used for her own delivery and also for her daughter’s delivery,” Ingasira added.

Under SHA, pregnant underage children will be issued with “temporary IDs” different from their parents’ number within the Integrated Healthcare Information Technology System (IHTS).

Through means testing, SHA will evaluate individual’s financial capacity to allow the system determine their annual premium.

“How will 15-19 year-old teens pay for SHIF? They have no capacity to do so and shouldn’t this demographic automatically fall under indigent populations without having to fill in the questionnaires for the means testing tool?” wondered Margaret Nyambura, an advocate for Universal Health Coverage.

She argued that teenage pregnancies are already a tough situation to handle, without the additional hurdle of the girls having to pay for delivery.

“According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2022,15 per cent of girls aged between 15-19 in Kenya have ever been pregnant” Nyambura said.

Ingasira noted that if the teenager or their family is found to be vulnerable to afford premiums, the government will step in to cover costs.