THE PROJECT
28th February 2021 marked the end of the Centre for Minority Rights and Strategic Litigation’s (CMRSL) 5 month project named Accelerating access to Justice for LGBTQ persons in the Kenyan coastal counties of Kwale, Taita Taveta, Mombasa, Kilifi and Lamu which was financially supported by the Government of Canada under the Canada Fund for Local Initiative (CFLI) programme.
The project’s main objective was to improve access to justice for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) persons in these 5 counties. In Kenya, LGBTQ individuals face 5-14 years imprisonment for same-sex relations, under laws that are discriminately enforced against them. This disproportionate application of the law, coupled with strong homophobic sentiment, eliminate any legal protections for LGBTQ persons, leading to discrimination and violence being perpetrated against them.
For example, in Mombasa County alone, between January 2020 and September, 2020, we had documented 9 cases of arbitrary arrests, 5 blackmails, 3 persons charged in 2 criminal cases and 3 cases of violence perpetrated against LGBTQ victims.
Due to barriers created by the above socio-legal factors, these violations go mostly unredressed. Other barriers are in arears of family, succession, identification, education, access to services and among others.
The project sought to mitigate these challenges within the LGBTQ community through:
- Training 48 paralegals and peers from the 12 LGBTQ organizations in the 5 coastal counties on human rights violations, monitoring and documentation and access to justice for LGBTQ persons.
- Providing the trained paralegals with both legal and financial support for movement and communication to enable them monitor, document and link clients to the justice system.
- Providing Legal aid through legal aid clinics to victims of human rights violations and discrimination amongst members of the 12 LGBTQ organizations in the 5 coastal counties.
- Targeted Litigation on LGBTQ rights defense by prosecuting 3 petitions in the High Court to enforce rights and freedoms of LGBTQ victims of human rights violations.
The project was implemented from October 2020 and ran through to February 2021 across the 5 Coastal counties in partnership with Pema Kenya, Hapa Kenya-Mombasa, Hapa Kenya-Taita Taveta, UKWELI, Tamba Pwani, Malindi Desire, Amkeni Malindi, Muamko Mpya, Rainbow Women of Kenya, Coast women for Women, Wacha Health and Pwani Transgender Initiative.
At the start of the project, each of the 12 organizations sent 4 violence response persons/paralegals, in total 48, who were trained for 2 days on Human Rights violations, monitoring and documentation and access to justice.
An analysis of the pre-training and post-training questionnaires filled by the paralegals/outreach workers/peers trained showed an improvement of 38% in knowledge on access to justice as well as monitoring, documentation and reporting processes of human rights violations.