Posts

16 years old.16 murder counts.Still a child under Kenyan law.

This one kept me up, the law has a lot to say about the Utumishi girls’ case… By Ibalai Valarie Sixteen girls died in that dormitory fire in Gilgil on the night of May 27 and 28, 2026. Moreover, eight of their classmates all 16 years old are now sitting in Kabete Juvenile Remand Home, facing 16 counts of murder each (Daily Nation, July 1, 2026). I have been following this case since the first reports came out of Nakuru County. Through all the outrage, the CCTV breakdowns, the comment section verdicts almost nobody is asking the legal questions. Not the emotional ones. The legal ones. Who are these children under Kenyan law? What rights do they have? And what about the sixteen families grieving? A 16-year-old charged with murder — is that even legal? Yes. Nevertheless, not the way it works for adults. Kenya’s Children Act 2022 is specific. A child under 12 cannot be charged at all. Between 12 and 13, the presumption of incapacity can be rebutted if the prosecution proves the c...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Debt Unpaid: Kenya's Belated Reckoning With Protest Victims

By Kimberly Odumbe | Advocate Trainee | Two years after Gen Z protesters were shot dead in Kenya's streets, the government has begun paying compensation to victims of protest-related violence dating back to 2013. Here is what the programme covers, who qualifies, and how to file a claim. On 25 June 2024, thousands of young Kenyans, united online and in the streets marched against the Finance Bill 2024 in what became the most consequential act of civic defiance since the push for multiparty democracy in the 1990s. By the end of the demonstrations, at least 62 people were dead, hundreds more lay injured, and dozens had simply vanished. Two years on, the Kenyan government has initiated a formal compensation programme for victims of protest-related human rights violations; a process spanning incidents between 2013 and 2025. The programme, backed by a Ksh 2 billion parliamentary allocation, is being administered through the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and ove...
1 comment
Read more

How a US-Backed Ebola facility landed Kenya’s health minister in contempt of court

By Ibalai Vallary | Ibalai Legal | Advocate Trainee Governments rarely defy courts loudly. They do it quietly, creatively, with enough legal language wrapped around the defiance that it almost looks like compliance. That is exactly what happened in Laikipia. This time, the court was not buying it. It is worth saying upfront why a Kenyan court case should matter to anyone outside Kenya the pattern here is not Kenyan, it is universal. An executive bypasses public process, a court pushes back, and it takes civil society and the press forcing the issue before anyone complies. This is just the clearest recent version of that pattern. Nobody asked Kenya In late May 2026, the White House confirmed plans to quarantine American citizens potentially exposed to Ebola not in America, but at Laikipia Air Base in Kenya, about 200 kilometres north of Nairobi. Kenya had recorded zero Ebola cases in the current outbreak. Let that sit for a second. The DRC had over 1,048 confirmed cases and at...
8 comments
Read more

WHAT THE GACHAGUA RULING ASKS OF KENYAN JURISPRUDENCE

By Tim Munyi Mugo | Advocate of the High Court of Kenya On 8 June 2026 a three-judge bench of the High Court did something Kenyan jurisprudence has not had to do before with this much clarity. It found that a constitutional right had been violated, and then declined to undo the act that violated it. The bench held that former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's right to a fair hearing was infringed when the Senate declined to grant an adjournment despite his absence from the impeachment proceedings. It then upheld the impeachment itself, finding that the broader process met constitutional thresholds. The remedy for the violation was not reinstatement. It was fifty million shillings in constitutional damages, and a declaration calling on Parliament to legislate a dedicated framework for impeaching a Deputy President. This is not a story about whether Gachagua should or should not have been removed. That question belongs to politics, to the Senate's numbers, and eventually to th...
1 comment
Read more

Who Is Protecting the Borrower? The Missing Duty of Care in Kenya’s Credit Reporting System

Co-authored by Tim Munyi Mugo and Judy Mathenge in the Credit and Governance Are Universal series. A credit reference bureau listing in Kenya today carries weight far beyond the loan it describes, following a person into a job interview, a second lender’s underwriting system, a tenancy application. It has become a character reference issued by an algorithm.  Yet the law governing how that reference comes into being assumes that harm only flows one way, and that a lender’s only duty is to warn before it causes damage. Between us, we have examined a case neither of us experienced alone: one was given direct sight of it, and we have analyzed it jointly. It involves three encounters with this system in a single month, with three different lenders. None of what follows names an institution. The pattern is the point, not the parties. The Listing with No Warning In the first instance, a lender reported the account as written off and non performing, arrears stretching back well over a th...
Post a Comment
Read more

ABSENT MPS, PRESENT TAXES: KENYA’S PARLIAMENT FAILS ITS PEOPLE, AGAIN

Parliamentary Accountability & the Finance Bill 2026    By Kimberly Odumbe | Advocate Trainee |   On 18th June 2026, the National Assembly passed the Finance Bill 2026, legislation that determines how 55 million Kenyans are taxed. The vote was decisive. The absences, even more telling. 349 Total MPs                                       162 Showed Up                                        186 Were Absent Loud in Debate. Silent in the Vote Of 349 MPs, only 162 showed up. 122 voted yes. 40 voted no. A record 186 MPs, over half the House, were simply absent during one of the most consequential votes of the year. Among the absentees were some of the Bill’s loudest critics.  Ndindi Nyoro, known for his vocal opposition to punitive taxation, was nowhere to be found. He l...
1 comment
Read more