Building police capability in child protection in Kenya

Existing literature illustrates a high prevalence of child protection issues throughout Kenya. This is adjoined by additional research detailing issues of corruption, cultural rationalization and the potential lack of capability to deal with the problem in existing law enforcement practices. There is no specific research that investigates the establishment or operational function of a child protection department within law enforcement in Kenya.

This study aims to directly address this research gap by exploring the establishment of an overseas initiative to support the development of a child protection function in the National Police Service of Kenya and to analyse the conditions in developing the project.

The study, which took place in Kenya, consists of n = 15 face to face interviews, comprising of n = 10 Kenyan Police Child Protection Officers, and n = 5 National Crime Agency (NCA) officers who contributed to the development of the unit. The semi-structured interviews were based upon existing literature from developing overseas support and child protection in Kenya.

The results evidenced the need to focus in three key areas when building child protection capability overseas to create a successful function; the requirement to tailor context specific understanding of the culture and operating environment, the need to understand the current and potential capabilities within this context, and the importance of obtaining leadership and governance support from appropriate stakeholders both internally and externally. These themes begin to develop a base for the development of international practice for the establishment of overseas child protection policing functions.