June 25 and the cry for justice from our youth

Nakuru based activist being arrested during the Gen Z annivesary protests. [File, Standard]

As Kenya marked the second anniversary of the Gen Z protests of 25 June 2024, the national conversation has rightly returned to justice, accountability, and the kind of republic we wish to become. Some moments change a nation’s trajectory forever. June 25 was one of them.

The loss of life during the Gen Z protests was not merely another episode of political unrest. It crossed a moral red line. A state can survive protests, criticism, and even periods of deep disagreement. It is far harder for a nation to remain unchanged when citizens, especially young citizens, are killed while demanding to be heard. 

Kenya has seen this painful pattern before. From the death of Baby Pendo in 2017, through the victims of the 2023 Azimio maandamano, to the Gen Z protests of 2024 and 2025, our collective wound is not simply that lives were lost. It is that too often the deaths are followed by promises, commissions, compensation, and eventually silence. The recently announced reparations framework is a welcome step.

Families who lost loved ones or continue to carry physical and emotional scars deserve support and recognition. But compensation cannot substitute justice. A “kill and compensate” approach may offer political relief, but it cannot heal a nation’s conscience. The questions are uncomfortable but necessary. Who was responsible? Who gave the orders? What reforms are needed to ensure no Kenyan family endures such pain again? Until these questions are addressed, the wounds remain open.

There is another question we should ask. What if leadership paused long enough to ask, not how to contain Gen Z, but what they have been trying to tell the country? Their message has never been only about a Finance Bill. It has been about dignity, inclusion, accountability, opportunity, and a desire to have a meaningful stake in the country’s future. 

For years, Kenya has spoken proudly about its youth bulge as a demographic advantage. Yet too many young people experience exclusion rather than opportunity, and frustration rather than influence. We celebrate our youthful population while often failing to create sufficient pathways for productive employment, civic participation, and leadership.

Young people are not demanding perfection from the state. They are asking for fairness. They want institutions that listen, leaders who are accountable, and a country where the Constitution is experienced not merely as a document, but as a lived reality.

Two years after June 25, Kenya is wrestling with a larger question than the anniversary itself. Can our institutions still command the trust of citizens? Can we build a republic where every life matters equally and where state power remains subject to justice and accountability? Nations are not ultimately defined by whether they experience moments of crisis. They are defined by how they respond to them. 

If June 25 changed Kenya, then our task now is to ensure it changes us for the better. The families of the victims, and indeed the country itself, deserve more than compensation. They deserve truth. They deserve accountability. They deserve institutions that protect life and uphold dignity. Above all, they deserve what the prophet Amos called for long ago: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” 

-The writer is a consultant in strategy and governance. [email protected]