Let me start a topic close to my age with some depressing news. If the SamlamAllianz’s 2026 report released this week is accurate, most employed Kenyans are likely to go poor before we grow older. Released this week, the report also triggered me to reflect on the rights of all older persons not just those eligible for pensions.

Barely fourteen months after being forced into hiding by an unlawful police operation on his house, Ndiang'ui Kinyagia has been awarded Sh 5 million by the High Court. The ruling sets an important precedent for hundreds of protesters whose rights have also been violated. It must also lead us to ask, what is the financial cost of illegal policing practices and who should be liable?

The proposal of a Foreign Agents Registration bill and the second refusal of an Open Society Foundations senior official to enter Kenya this week, signals a tightening Kenya government stance on international financing. If so, how could the Government avoid slipping into the protracted controversy of the Uganda’s Protection of Sovereignty Act earlier this year?

This week’s 10 September ruling striking down the Community Groups Registration Act (2022) ends one of the major assaults on the right of communities to associate across Kenya’s 47 counties since the promulgation of the Constitution sixteen years ago.

Overshadowed by the Presidential Katiba Day event, businesses, civic and government agencies held the first of eight roundtables ahead of Kenya's inaugural Global Trust Summit in October. With public trust in government at an all-time low, what can be done to rebuild it across all public institutions?

Eight years, 42 witnesses, and a mountain of evidence culminated in the conviction of former Migori Governor Okoth Obado, Michael Oyamo, and Caspal Obiero for the killing of Sharon Otieno. Their upcoming sentencing has revived questions about justice for Sharon and her unborn child, the only people who will not be in court on 16 September.

On 30 August 2026, the world marks the 20th anniversary of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Mature democracies protect the rights of its critics as fiercely as those of its supporters. No activist, journalist, visitor or political opponent should ever vanish into a legal black hole. If the State is serious about moving past one of its darkest constitutional stains, it must ensure that victims of enforced disappearance

For over a decade, Kenyans have buried protesters, treated life-changing injuries and watched cycles of violence repeat on our streets and in our communities. A new draft Freedom of Assembly Bill offers a chance to break this pattern. What does it get right, where does it depart from previous bills, and what must be strengthened to ensure that demonstrations are protected, not punished?

What is more astonishing? Seven citizens allegedly abducted, unlawfully detained and tortured after a march honouring victims of police brutality on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture or the Interior Principal Secretary insisting no enforced disappearances have taken place under President Ruto’s administration?

Now firmly etched in the national conscience, the second anniversary of 25 June 2024 was thankfully commemorated without fatalities and few injuries. The mothers of those we commemorated once again turned private grief into another historical moment of national resistance.

Listening to the State House speeches and reading the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights Reparations Framework, I agree with transitional justice expert Tina Alai’s observation. While the moment is significant, it is not yet historic. What clarity does the Framework offer victims and a nation traumatised by state violence and what must the State do next?

With 16 Utumishi Girls Academy students dead and 74 injured, the nation reels from another horrific tragic incident. As feminists are forced to organise another public memorial this coming Madaraka Day, what it would take to keep all Kenya’s women and children safe.