NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun, 14 – An official in the Ministry of Education was shocked that women in the Western Region of the country did not go into a marriage with children they had before they got married.
A Deputy Director in the Ministry, John Matiang’i learned this when he visited Kakamega South and Butere Sub counties to assess the status of the implementation of the Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project (SEQIP) in the areas.
He had led a Joint Support mission to the Sub-county.
The two sub-counties are among 110 sub-counties in 30 Counties, whose transition and completion rates of learners from primary to Secondary Education were below the national transition rate.
The programme, funded by the government and the World Bank, aims at addressing among others, the socioeconomic and cultural factors that impede children access, quality education, retention, and transition from primary to secondary education in the areas.
When the team toured schools in the area, school administrators and officials in the Ministry of Education said a significant number of children who had difficulties attending primary education and, later transiting to secondary schools from the area were those born out of wedlock.
“And where are their parents,” Mr. Matiang’i asked, in disbelief.
He was told their mothers had gotten married, leaving the children in the hands of the grandparents to take care of them.
He couldn’t understand the cultural setting that makes it possible for a woman to leave behind her child upon getting married.
“Every child belongs to God,” Mr. Matiang’i was to later lament when he reported the team’s finding on return to Nairobi.
He had evidently not overcome the shock of mothers walking into marriage and leaving their children to somebody else.
Notwithstanding the shock, Mr. Matiang’i raised fundamental questions about child survival in modern society. The questions strike at the heart of the Children Act Chapter, 2001.
One of the extraordinary features of the Children Act Chapter, 2001, is that it acknowledges and recognizes the rights of children born out of wedlock. The piece of legislation put these children on equal footing as far as their rights and other legitimate interests are concerned. These children have as many rights as those born within marriages recognized by the law.
The law identifies the mother as having parental responsibility at the first instance in the event that the biological father and the child’s mother were not married at the birth of the child.
The ensuing marriage of the mother doesn’t release her of the responsibilities she owes to the child. These responsibilities include providing for the education of the child. She cannot run away from the responsibilities she assumed by bearing and giving forth the child—with or without the assistance of the biological father.
There are cases, however, where the father acquires parental responsibility for the child, following the birth of the child. The Children’s Act has provided for circumstances under which such parental responsibility is acquired. A father cannot, at a whim, release himself from responsibility once he has assumed parental responsibility for the child(ren). He is responsible, in this context, for the education of the child until the child completes his/her education and training.
Questions of a child languishing at the grandparent’s home because neither parent is available to provide resources necessary for school attendance should not, in ordinary circumstances, arise. The Children’s Act, and with enabling regulations provides protections for such a child—which protections should see the child having a seamless educational experience although the education system.
With or without the protection of the law, the Customary Law in all our indigenous communities, protected children born out of wedlock. The Luhya Community is patrilineal as opposed to a matrilineal society. A Patrilineal society refers to a society that organizes its family relationships in societies by lines of descent from a person’s male ancestors.
In this context, children belong to fathers. The implication of this familial arrangement is that fathers assume the duty of care for children—right from infancy to adulthood.
By implication, Luhya Customary Law imposed child care responsibilities, particularly the child’s education, on the father. It is the clan of the father that actually educated the child, by dint being asked to custodial care of the child born out of wedlock—to bring up the child into the ways and habits of the father’s clan.
With or without the Children’s Act, 2001, the Government or appropriate agencies of Government, can invoke the Customary laws and in this instance, Luhya Customary Law on Child care, to ask biological parents to meet the costs of the education of children born out of wedlock.
It doesn’t matter where the child is. That is a matter foreign to the right of the child to education. The child can be with the maternal grandparents, uncles or whoever. He or she needs protection from the law. His or her entitlements are sacrosanct.
Ancient societies never abandoned children—regardless of whether they were born within or out of wedlock. We have historical and mythological information which demonstrates that children were never abandoned.
There are those children whose birth threatened the powers that be. Both or one parent didn’t forsake the child.
We have the example of Moses in the Bible. He wasn’t abandoned just like that. We all remember the children’s Bible Story of how the baby Moses was put in a basket and placed into the River Nile—not with a view to letting it drown but be rescued. And he was rescued.
We have the boy Jesus Christ. How he was rescued from a mass killing ordered by King Herod. The parents ran away with the boy to Egypt. He survived against human mechanizations and gave us a new, all-embracing Religion—Christianity.
We have the mythical Remus and Romulus—for the older generations of Kenyans who read about these twin boys in primary schools in the 1970s—taken care of by a wolf, and in time founding a Nation—Rome.
Each civilization and society have stories of abandoned children who nevertheless survived the neglect and perfidy of others and became great benefactors to that society or family. Everyone knows about the story of Joseph in the Bible. Sold but not broken.
All children belong to God, as Mr. Matiang’i poignantly observed, vouching for the children some mothers abandon—by virtue of the cultural demands of their communities.
However, all these children have biological and surrogate parents who should take care of them during their age of vulnerability.
The children whose mothers got married elsewhere—be they in a patrilineal as or to matrilineal society—have a right to education.
Modern law as well as customary law—don’t know or care about whether they were born out of wedlock or within a marriage designated by the Statutes. They have a right to education. They ought to be enabled to access education.
Kennedy Buhere, is a Communications Officer at the Ministry of Education.
Want to send us a story? Contact Shahidi News Tel: +254115512797 (Mobile & WhatsApp)
