On May 20, Nairobi’s Milimani High Court issued a landmark ruling in Petition E490/2025 that fundamentally reshapes how Kenyan law treats consensual sex among minors. In a judgment delivered by Justice Bahati Mwamuye, the court held that applying Sections 8, 9, and 11 of the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) to teenagers in consensual, close-in-age relationships “violates [...]

Justice Nyaundi of Nairobi’s Milimani High Court on May 29 issued an urgent conservatory order suspending any move to establish the planned US-backed Ebola quarantine center. The conservatory order was granted following a petition by the Katiba Institute, barring officials from opening or approving the facility until the case is fully heard before the Court. [...]

Griffins Abuora is a Kenya School of Law student based in Kisumu, where he reports on legal, policy, and human rights developments in Kenya for JURIST. The arrest of five activists in Nairobi on Tuesday, May 12, during the Africa Forward Summit, once again placed Kenya at the center of a difficult debate: how should [...]

Griffins Abuora is a Kenya School of Law student based in Kisumu, where he reports on legal, policy, and human rights developments in Kenya for JURIST. This dispatch is offered in both English and Swahili below.  ENGLISH On April 24, Kenya’s Court of Appeal sitting in Malindi delivered a landmark judgment that reshapes the country’s [...]

Griffins is a JURIST correspondent and law student at the Kenya School of Law, based in Kisumu, where he covers legal, policy, and human rights developments in Kenya. On March 9, Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) rolled out a fully automated Instant Fines Traffic Management System, marking a bold shift in traffic enforcement. [...]

Last month, Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) asked the High Court to dismiss a petition by lawyer Felix Kiton and others seeking to compel it to conduct electoral boundary delimitation ahead of the 2027 general election, intensifying the legal and constitutional debate around representation and electoral preparedness. The commission’s position that it will [...]

On March 19, Justice Lawrence Mugambi of the High Court of Kenya delivered a landmark judgment affirming that mobile phone numbers form an integral part of an individual’s digital identity and are protected under the constitutional right to privacy. The decision arose from a petition filed by Erastus Ngura Odhiambo, an inmate who challenged the [...]

A recent discussion among legal and human rights experts has exposed the alarming scale of obstetric violence in Africa, a crisis that contributes to the continent’s disproportionately high maternal mortality rates. The findings, shared during a virtual panel, underscore the urgent need for systemic reforms in maternal healthcare. This dispatch was co-authored by Divyabharthi Baradhan [...]

On February 12, the High Court of Kenya struck down Section 95(1)(b) of the Penal Code as unconstitutional. The Section made it a crime to “create a disturbance in a manner likely to cause a breach of peace,” meaning a person could be arrested for causing public commotion, shouting loudly, or behaving in a way police believed [...]

A Kenyan High Court judge halted implementation of a landmark US-Kenya health cooperation agreement on December 19, pending a constitutional challenge. Justice Chacha Mwita of the High Court of Kenya at Milimani Law Courts issued the order suspending the framework signed on December 4 between the governments of Kenya and the United States, following a [...]