Our History
ESTABLISHED 1998.
CRECO was founded in 1998, as a culmination of a networking history dating as far back as 1992 with the exponential increase in CSOs involved in democracy and governance work in Kenya. CRECO’s membership comprises 22 CSOs implementing diverse human rights, democracy and governance activities in the 47 Counties of Kenya.
CRECO evolved amidst vigorous debates on the best approach to conduct civic education and pursuit for constitutional change in Kenya. Consequently, the Consortium began its work with country wide civic education targeted at citizens’ participation in Kenya’s constitution review process, culminating in the design and implementation of the National Civic Education Programme (NCEP I) in the period 2000-2002. NCEP I served as a platform for creating a new cadre of leadership in Kenya. The “Moi Must Go!” campaign, an initiative of the programme, was a major success. The triumph of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) in the 2002 General Elections on a reform platform can partly be attributed to this campaign. Although the NARC Government promised to deliver a new constitution within 100 days of its coming to power, the promise was never fulfilled, and a draft Constitution presented by the Government was rejected by citizens during the 21st November 2005 Constitutional Referendum against bickering over NARC’s pre-election Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
In the years 2006 – 2007, CRECO was involved in NCEP II, a follow up programme of NCEP I to champion comprehensive governance reforms ahead of the 2007 elections. In this programme, CRECO had advocacy initiatives aimed at strengthening institutions that would guarantee free and fair elections in 2007. The reforms envisaged were not successful and the outcome was the chaos experienced after the 2007 elections. In the post-2007 period, CRECO and other CSOs campaigned for the inclusion of the Agenda 4 Reforms outlined by the Panel of Eminent African Personalities in the subsequent political negotiations. A key output of this advocacy was that the Grand Coalition partners – then led by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga – agreed on comprehensive reforms and set up several commissions, including the Independent Review Commission (IREC) and the Commission for the Investigation of the Post-Election Violence (CIPEV), which emphasized that the need for a new constitution as the basis for comprehensive reforms.
Former Executive Secretaries
Regina Opondo
Dr. Wambua Kituku
Kawive Wambua
In a bid to ensure that Kenyans got a new people-driven constitution CRECO mobilised CSOs to create a national platform for advocacy on, and value addition to the Constitutional Review Process. This initiative which was dubbed the “Katiba Sasa” campaign was carried out for over one year and interfaced with the work of the Committee of Experts (CoE) – a committee that was tasked with harmonising the views of Kenyans on the constitution. During the 2010 Referendum period, CRECO with other Hivos-funded partners, set up and rolled out a national ICT based monitoring platform called Uchaguzi that monitored the referendum.
Approval of the new Constitution in the August 4, 2010 referendum was a milestone in CRECO’s quest for constitutionalism and good governance in Kenya. After the referendum, the Jukwaa La Katiba was initiated, as the citizens’ platform for participation in the implementation of Kenya’s new constitution.
We have broken new ground in provision of national civic education through citizen Barazas and infotainment, campaigns utilizing artists’ skills as carriers of civic education messages. We believe in partnership, collaboration and networking with like-minded governmental and non-governmental institutions and the private sector as a strategy for promoting the realization of constitution implementation and constitutionalism, and nurturing of positive democratic growth and culture in Kenya.
Former CRECO Chairpersons
Rhoda Musyoka
Collins Owuor(RIP)
Tom Kagwe
