Close your eyes for a moment and imagine how your life would be if you were afraid to visit a public or private washroom outside your house 😟. That is the life of transgender people in Kenya. Thankfully, the final horn of the race for transgender dignity has been sounded!

On 12^th August 2025, the High Court of Kenya affirmed the rights of transgender persons to determine their self-identified gender and directed the government to initiate legislative reforms for recognition of transgender persons on equal basis with other genders. The landmark judgement is a juicy sweet fruit from 6 years of extensive litigation in which Amka Africa supported the petitioner and also joined the case as the 1^st interested party.

The case, SC -vs- Director of Public Prosecutions, Attorney General & Others, concerns a transgender woman, SC, who suffered inhuman and degrading treatment while in lawful custody at a prison in Eldoret, and at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. The violations included: intrusive body searches, degrading physical and medical examination, taking of her blood samples without consent, and unlawful disclosure of her medical information. Since 2019, Amka Africa’s team dedicatedly supported the petitioner’s legal team and rallied others to join the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) culminating in the joinder of Kenya Human Rights Commission as the 2^nd Interested Party in July 2024 and the larger transgender community supporting the case on the sidelines.

To give you but a snippet of our winsome strategy, we avoided the usual trap where parties to a case lose their humanity to legal jargon and technicalities and leveraged on the lived experiences of the petitioner. The human-centred approach coupled with expert witnesses on gender identity drawn from Kenya and South Africa was a game charger. Smile and dive in to read this watershed judgment!

Appeal- stepping up the fight for transgender dignity

The government has appealed the judgement, but guess what, we are happy to step up the fight for transgender dignity at the Court of Appeal because the appeal offers a stronger opportunity to affirm the Constitutional guarantees of Kenyan transgender persons. We are gearing for a resounding triumph! Again, the appeal does not stop the law reform process. We are pressing on both ways.

Policy advocacy

As the PIL dragged on in court, Amka Africa relentingly carried out strategic advocacy with the policy influencers and makers in the critical area of security and identity documents for transgender persons. So far, we have impacted over 100 duty bearers on transgender identity and rights.