NAIROBI, Kenya — Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) committed during Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence have urged the Supreme Court to end what they describe as nearly 13 years of exclusion from justice, reparations and constitutional protection.
The appeal, filed as Supreme Court Petition No. E041 of 2025, seeks to overturn aspects of earlier court decisions that denied compensation to some survivors while recognising others, arguing that all victims of election-related sexual violence deserve equal treatment under the Constitution.
The petition has been brought by eight survivors together with the Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW), the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ Kenya), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and other organisations including Utu Wetu Trust and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the petitioners said the prolonged legal battle has stretched for nearly 13 years, during which children born as a result of the 2007-2008 sexual violence have now reached adulthood while their mothers continue to pursue justice through the courts.
The appeal challenges the government’s alleged failure to prevent, investigate and prosecute widespread sexual violence committed during the post-election violence, as well as its failure to provide effective remedies to survivors.
According to the petitioners, successive reparations programmes established after the 2007-2008 violence and following the 2024-2025 protests have recognised and compensated victims of political violence while consistently excluding survivors of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence.
They argue that the continued exclusion violates constitutional guarantees of equality, dignity and access to justice.
A central issue before the Supreme Court concerns a 2025 Court of Appeal judgment, which upheld compensation for four survivors whose cases involved State security officers or had been formally reported to police, while denying compensation to four others attacked by civilian militias or who did not report the assaults during the violence.
The petitioners argue that this distinction created an unconstitutional hierarchy of victims based on the identity of the perpetrators and whether traumatised survivors were able to report crimes during a period of widespread insecurity.
They further contend that the Court of Appeal wrongly applied ordinary civil negligence standards instead of international human rights principles requiring the State to exercise due diligence in protecting citizens from sexual violence.
The appeal also asks the Supreme Court to determine whether the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) has an ongoing statutory obligation to investigate unresolved cases of police misconduct linked to the 2007-2008 violence.
Lead counsel Willis Otieno said the absence of investigations more than a decade after the attacks demonstrates a continuing failure to provide constitutional remedies.
“The lack of effective remedies still continues to date. No investigations have ever commenced 13 years later. Constitutional accountability cannot be conditional on expecting traumatised survivors to perform impossible tasks while state security organs stood by,” Otieno said.
The petitioners are seeking survivor-centred remedies, including compensation, rehabilitation, psychosocial support, public acknowledgement, official apologies and institutional reforms aimed at preventing similar violations in future.
One survivor said she hoped the case would finally deliver justice not only for herself but for all survivors who have waited years for recognition.
“I have carried this pain for many years. I pray that this case will finally bring justice, not only for me, but for all survivors who have been waiting to be seen and heard,” she said.
Another survivor said the appeal represents a final opportunity for acknowledgement after previous courts failed to fully recognise her experience.
“All I have ever wanted is for someone to acknowledge what happened to us and to believe me. The lower courts may have doubted my experience, but I hope this Court will finally give us the justice we have waited so long for,” she said.
The petitioners also urged the Government to end the exclusion of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence from national reparations programmes and called for the implementation of comprehensive reparations, including healthcare, psychosocial support, rehabilitation and guarantees against future violations.
They further appealed to the Presidential Working Group on the Establishment of a Framework for the Management of Claims and Compensation, chaired by Professor Makau Mutua, to ensure survivors of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence are explicitly included in the proposed national compensation framework.
The case traces its origins to Constitutional Petition No. 122 of 2013, in which eight survivors challenged the State’s failure to prevent, investigate and prosecute sexual violence committed during the 2007-2008 post-election crisis.
In a landmark judgment delivered in December 2020, the High Court found that the Government had violated its constitutional obligations by failing to conduct effective investigations into post-election sexual violence and awarded Sh4 million each to four of the eight survivors.
The Court of Appeal later affirmed parts of that decision while limiting compensation to only some of the petitioners, prompting the current appeal before Kenya’s apex court.
