National Action Plan Legal Aid 2017-2022 Kenya
Executive Summary
The Government of Kenya, through the National Legal Aid and Awareness Programme (NALEAP), now constituted as the National Legal Aid Service, developed the National Legal Aid and Awareness Policy (NLAAP), an overarching policy, to address issues pertaining to legal aid and access to justice in the country. This policy views legal aid as a critical component of enhancing access to justice in the country and emphasizes the need to ensure the right to access justice as a constitutional right. The goal of the NLAAP is to enhance the facilitation of access to justice through a national, sustainable and quality legal aid and awareness framework in line with the Constitution, regional and international human rights standards. In order to achieve its constitutional and international obligation towards access to justice, the Government of Kenya also enacted the Legal Aid Act No. 6 of 2016. Specifically, the Act established the National Legal Aid Service (NLAS), a successor to NALEAP, to facilitate provision of legal and countrywide. NLAS aims to attain this by focusing on implementation of a broad-based legal aid and related services that will impact on legal aid and access to justice in Kenya through development of a Legal Aid National Action Plan.
This National Action Plan (NAP) (2017-2022) is based on various policies and legislative blueprints, survey on legal aid status and proposals from extensive consultations with legal aid actors undertaken over the years. All these combined informed the development of strategic objectives and corresponding intervention programmes and activities. NAP serves as a road map for coordinated implementation of legal aid interventions by the government and legal aid actors across development sectors for maximum impact.