Advocates Help Voices to be Heard

In a small room at the AMPATH Centre, Jane nervously eyed the visitors from Indiana, smoothed her long black and white skirt, and launched into her story. “I am a rape survivor,” she said in Kiswahili accented English. “I was assaulted by my uncle in March, and I ended up being HIV-positive.”

Tears filled her eyes, but she continued to speak. After the attack, Jane (not her real name) went to the hospital and then to the police. But in Kenya, corruption and gender discrimination cause many sexual assault cases to be dropped early in the process. The prosecutor in Jane’s case first ignored her, and then suggested she abandon the case. “But then Milkah came to my aid, and she pushed things along in court,” Jane said, gesturing at Milkah Cheptinga and smiling for the first time.

Cheptinga is the legal director of the Legal Aid Centre of Eldoret (LACE), which works in close association with AMPATH. Cheptinga and volunteer Kenyan lawyers and law students represent low-income clients like Jane for free in cases involving family disputes, gender-based violence, and estate matters. Some LACE clients have been pushed off their land by greedy in-laws, some have been discriminated against because they are HIV-positive. Others have been left destitute and homeless after going without spousal support for young children.

In all these areas of the law, most Kenyans have strong rights on paper yet no hope of enforcing those rights without an attorney. Since LACE’s founding in September of 2008, the program has already represented over 300 persons like Jane, all of whom are affected by HIV/AIDS. This innovative integration of health care and human rights led to LACE being invited to present overviews of the program at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna and the 2010 conference of the American Public Health Association.

Thanks to support from Open Society Initiative of East Africa, Rotary Club of Indianapolis, Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, and the Indiana legal community, which launched an annual “Race for LACE” fundraiser, LACE plans to build on its success by adding rural-based paralegals, enhanced community rights education, and advanced education for human rights-oriented Kenyan law graduates. But the core goal will remain the pursuit of justice for clients like Jane. LACE leaned on the once-reluctant prosecutor and helped Jane obtain medical evidence, so now her attacker is jailed and facing several serious charges.

“I am so grateful to Milkah and LACE,” Jane said to the Indiana law delegation as she finished telling her story. Now it was Milkah’s turn to smile. “Once the court sees that someone like Jane has an advocate on her side pushing hard, things start to move the right way.”