YAK, Kenya

Kenya´s justice system can be hard to children: when found guilty of an offense they are often treated as adults. However, a majority of the youth covered by juvenile justice are guilty of small offenses, having difficult living conditions, poverty, and lack of support systems and training at the background. The most important thing would be to get them reintegrated into society and to guarantee their access to justice. A legal system aiming at this would require better cooperation between government agencies and the children´s communities. In addition to the inadequate cooperation, the Kenyan juvenile justice system is suffering from the lack of resources and a comprehensive rehabilitation strategy.

“The best way to survive a borstal institution”, one interviewee said, “is to make friends with the guards and lie low.”

The juvenile justice program of Youth Alive! Kenya (YAK) aims at a more effective juvenile justice system that is based on the integration of young people into society. The project aims to improve the quality of the adaptation work done in the institutions, to further develop legislation and procedures and to strengthen the capacity of communities as well as their contacts with the authorities.

Founded in 1999, YAK is an organisation advocating for young people´s health, environment, livelihood, democracy, governance and human rights. KIOS has been supporting the youth justice project of YAK since 2006, and nowadays these organizations also have a Partnership Programme.

With the first grant, 32 900 euro in 2006, a workshop concerning the relations between national legislation and practices and international child rights conventions was held for the employees of the courts and law enforcement agencies. YAK also organized public forums about the reasons of youth crime, and appointments for the authorities and civil society representatives. of meetings have been sent to the authorities. Staff of foster care facilities was trained and children were given legal assistance. In addition, YAK set up a community-level committee to support young people returning from prison, and published children´s newsletters. Besides the actual information work, the multifaceted communication work of YAK included a workshop for representatives of media and an analysis of representations of youth crime in the media.

With the second grant, amounting to 45 500 euro, YAK continued providing legal aid in Nairobi and Kisumu, and produced information material, a guide for best practices, and newsletters addressed to policy makers. YAK also organised community forums as well as several trainings concerning children’s rights and juvenile prisons and local and national workshop for e.g. juvenile justice actors, child welfare – and other authorities and youth organizations.

In 2009 started a two-year project that received the funding of 92 300 euro. So far the project has included information dissemination on children’s rights, production of publications and preparations for a document about juvenile justice, legal aid and training of staff of juvenile prisons.

”In practice the institutions are manned by prison officers who are not offered any special training for dealing with the special needs of children”

The strengths of the juvenile justice work of YAK are smooth cooperation with different actors, in particular the authorities and foster care facilities, a promising start of the legal aid programme, and a wide approach to juvenile justice. The challenges have been among others the coordination of the project activities with the authorities’ schedules. In addition, the number of customers seeking legal aid has been higher than expected as well as the number of non-criminal cases. One of the challenges has also been the transfer of the cases before ordinary courts. Thus, YAK is cooperating with the association of judges in order for the children’s cases to be processed in their own court. Also the post-election riots in Kenya in 2007 have slowed down the project.

During the progress of the project, its focus has shifted from service provision to advocacy and lobbying at the national level. In 2009 YAK became part of the observation group of the State Prison Department, which is a sign of the increased expertise of YAK. YAK has quickly found weaknesses in local systems especially in Kisumu and has been able to add value to the juvenile justice system with its work.

KIOS has visited YAK in 2006, 2008 and 2009. The Executive Director of YAK gave a presentation at KIOS seminar in 2008.

(March 2010)