My memorandum on the Children’s Bill, 2021 to the parliament of Kenya
3 min readNov 12, 2021
The Children’s Bill,2021 amendment memorandum
To: The National Assembly of Kenya
Author: Oscar Okwero, a Cyber Security policy consultant.
Date: 4th November 2021.
Background
The world in increasingly going digital and therefore any policy provisions should take into consideration the fact that increasingly we conduct our businesses online. Children as young as 1 year old are exposed to digital media through games, audio and visual digital artefacts. Therefore, the children’s bill should consider what constitutes children’s rights, responsibilities and abuse in the digital age. With my expertise and experience in Cyber security especially on digital privacy rights and Cyber security policy, I recommend the following amendments to the bill;
12. 3) add an explicit provision to state that the basic education should include exposure to the digital sphere so as to guarantee every child in Kenya at least grows knowing the basics of digital technology so as to be competitive in the digital world.
18.1) include digital platforms because the digital sphere has also become an active conflict realm.
4) No person or actor shall subject a child to armed conflict either digitally or otherwise and in such cases shall take precaution to protect the child’s well-being. This should include digitally and guarantee their safety and privacy and not be exposed to Information operations, otherwise called Information arsenals.
20. 1) Add section c, No person shall take advantage of a child through digital media manipulation like spreading untrue information, impersonation through technologies like deep fakes and voice manipulation technologies.
20. 3)1) Add a section to read;
Any person who uses a child’s image or any digital representation for commercial purposes without without express permission of the guardian of the child that should include agreeing to a minimum percentage of the proceeds for the benefit of the child shall be liable to prosecution and a fine.
4) Add digital crime called doxing: - Which is the publishing of personally identifying information of a child, and Flaming: - which involves using of angry words through a communication channel that may cause distress to a child.
5) Add psychological harm through transmission of and exposure to harmful digital media which has been a cause of many child suicide cases and brainwashing as done by terrorist groups in the recruitment of child fighters through highly doctored multimedia.
25) Include the right to digital privacy that includes images, representative data that may be used to identify the child like Meta data. This should also include Biometric data including finger prints, thumb prints, voice, and gnome sequences.
About the author:
Oscar Okwero is a Cyber security consultant & Cyber Security fellow at the Centre for Intellectual property & technology Law (CIPIT) at the Strathmore Law School. He specialises in Cyber security policy research on emerging technologies like AI & crypto currencies. A Chevening scholar, Oscar holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Strathmore University and an MSc IT Cyber Security from the University of Glasgow, UK.