160 Girls Makes Legal History
Unconstitutional Treatment
The Equality Effect, in partnership with Ripples International (Tumaini Rape Rescue Centre), filed an action claiming that the state’s failure to enforce child rape laws violated the equality rights of the claimants, all rape victims between the ages of 3-17 years.
The 160 Girls High Court decision found that the police treatment in 100% of the 160 Girls claims was unconstitutional.
The High Court found the state responsible for discriminatory treatment of rape claims by police, such as failure to investigate and victim harassment. It also concluded that police failure to enforce rape laws had created a climate of impunity for rape, and found the police responsible for the rapes.
Results:
The High Court ordered the police to enforce existing laws and conduct “prompt, proper, efficient and professional” rape investigations.
The 160 Girls High Court decision provided for access to justice for the individual claimants in the case, and all 10.5 million girls and 11 million boys in Kenya and beyond.
The 160 Girls High Court decision gave The Equality Effect an effective tool to help guide the transformation of the justice system to ensure that the Court’s decision resulted in concrete equality change.
From this ONE high court decision…
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