Abstract
Constitutional change in Kenya has opened up spaces of contestation of rights for citizens. However, marginalisation of certain segments of the population remains a key constraint to achieving universal protections. A lack of awareness and capacity of both citizens and the government hinders the advancement of the goals to lift the standards of all the citizens. There has been the extension of the rights to the individual to cover political, economic, social, economic and cultural rights. Communities living in informal settlements face extreme margin alisa tion which is vividly expressed in the lack of access to justice. This is specifically difficult for women and children as they face social, cultural and economic constraints. Using Mukuru Kayaba informal settlement as a case study, this article will examine how the place and status of the local administration can be leveraged and negotiated to secure access to justice for women and children. Secondary data will be analysed and presented narratively. This is to contribute to the debate on effectively engendering access to justice for women and children ; it is especially important at the grassroots level where women and children may lack the capacity to seek redress from other sources.
Highlights
This article examines how local public administration, the offices of the local chief and the assistant chief, can serve as an avenue for improving access to justice for women and children in urban informal settlements
Communities living in informal settlements face extreme marginalisation which is vividly expressed in the lack of access to justice
The third part unpacks the location of the public administration found in the midst of constitutional change, and its relationship with informal settlement communities
Summary
This article examines how local public administration, the offices of the local chief and the assistant chief, can serve as an avenue for improving access to justice for women and children in urban informal settlements. The article is set out as follows. The introduction sets out the main issues that the article seeks to examine. The second part addresses the central idea of the study: engendering access to justice. In this part, the article examines how women and children experience access to justice through the lens of inequality, exclusion and disempowerment. The third part unpacks the location of the public administration found in the midst of constitutional change, and its relationship with informal settlement communities. The fourth and fifth parts of the article present a brief discussion of the findings and the conclusions drawn
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