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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...
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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...
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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...
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That loan app just called your mother. Here is what the law says about that.

By Ibalai Vallary | Founder of Ibalai Legal What Kenyan borrowers need to know about digital lending, debt shaming and the rights they never knew they had. Your phone buzzes during dinner. It is not your bank. It is your aunt in Nakuru, voice shaking:  “Someone called me. They said you owe money. They said you will be arrested. They read me your loan balance down to the last shilling.” You did not give them her number. You never listed her as a reference. But the moment you installed that loan app and tapped allow on the contacts permission, you handed over your entire phonebook. And now your family is paying the price for a loan approved in under three minutes. This is not an edge case. This is standard operating procedure for Kenya’s predatory digital lenders. And as of 2025, it is finally, explicitly, criminal. How did we get here? Kenya’s digital lending boom was built on genuine need. Millions locked out of traditional banking by lack of collateral or a formal pay slip needed ...
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BLOOD ON THE DOORSTEP

Kenya's Femicide Crisis and the Long Silence of the Law   By Kimberly Odumbe  | Advocate Trainee |  Somewhere in Kenya today, a woman will be killed. Not by a stranger lurking in shadow, but by a partner who once made her laugh, a relative who called her family, a man she trusted with her life. This is not conjecture. This is data.  Kenya's femicide crisis has reached a scale that defies euphemism and demands the full weight of legal, political, and social reckoning. THE NUMBERS THAT HAUNT US  The Heinrich Böll Foundation's 2026 femicide report, She Did Not Die by Accident, documented at least 220 femicide cases across Kenya in 2025 alone, 129 of those in just the first three months of the year. In 2024, figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recorded 725 cases nationwide.  UNESCO confirmed that on average, one woman is killed every single day. These are not peaks in a trend,  they are the trend.  AT A GLANCE  725  wom...
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DIVORCE BATTLES: “IT’S IN MY NAME” ISN’T THE SLAM DUNK YOU THINK IT IS

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By Ibalai Vallary | Founder of Ibalai Legal What a recent High Court ruling in FWM v JMG [2026] tells us about property rights, domestic work, and what Kenyan courts actually look for when a long-term relationship ends   confirming the question of “who gets what” when a relationship ends. The Background of the Case Picture a woman, we will call her by her initials, FWM, as is standard practice in Kenyan courts when anonymizing family law matters. FWM and a man we will call JMG began their relationship and moved in together. Over the years that followed, they built what looked, from every angle, like a complete family life. They lived together as husband and wife. They had three children together. They raised those children in a shared home. When neighbours, friends, or anyone else looked at them, they saw a married couple. During those years together, JMG acquired land and property in Narok. This property was registered solely in his name.FWM, meanwhile, was doing what millio...
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THE URGENT NEED FOR COMPETENCY IN SCHOOL GOVERNANCE

By Tim Munyi Mugo | Advocate of the High Court of Kenya  Sixteen girls died at Utumishi Girls Academy in Gilgil on the night of 27 May 2026. Seventy-nine others were injured. The dormitory that burned housed approximately 220 students and contained 135 bunk beds. One emergency exit door was locked. Ten of the sixteen deaths occurred in the section of the building that exit door served.  By the morning of 29 May 2026 the Cabinet Secretary for Education had dissolved the Board of Management and directed the Teachers Service Commission to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the school principal. Two teachers who had received advance warning of planned unrest from students and failed to act were also placed under investigation.  The response was swift. Whether it was serious is a different question.  WHAT THE BOARD DID NOT CONTAIN A Board of Management exists to govern. Governing means asking, regularly and on the record, whether the institution is safe, compliant,...
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