Introduction
The Legal Empowerment Hub is an initiative of Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) and the legal firm of
Waringa Wahome & Co Advocates. It builds on MSJC’S decade long of community organizing and building networks of peoples’ agency along different issues such as extra judicial killings, right to life, right to clean and safe drinking water, on Article 43 (which provides for Social and Economic rights), political
accountability, gender based violence, right to food among other issues. Movements such as the Dhobi Women Network, the Ecological Justice Network, Waste Pickers Network and Community Health Workers and the Campaign against Drugs, Crime, and Violence have emerged as frontlines in the struggle
for social justice and dignity. The hub now seeks to consolidate the gains of 10 years of community organizing by merging law with the people, demystifying legal processes, equipping communities to build their agency, and transforming legal practice into a tool for defending social justice.
Situated in the informal settlement of Mathare, the LEH is built on the conviction that law can and must be reclaimed as a weapon for the people, particularly of the grassroots in their struggle for human rights and social justice. We believe that legal tools should be placed in the hands of social movements, those at the margins who are best positioned to shape social justice from below in defense of their rights, dignity, and livelihood.
Vision
The Legal Empowerment Hub envisions a society where communities use the law as a tool to build people’s agency in advancing social justice movements that defend their dignity and livelihoods.
Our vision is rooted in the belief that the law is not neutral—it is a concentrated form of politics.
Therefore, building the legal power of social justice movements is essential in building people’s structure for confronting the oppression’s structural roots and defending their social justice, dignity, and livelihood.
Purpose and Orientation
The Legal Empowerment Hub aims to move away from the fragmented rights discourse to the conceptualization, operationalization, and strategizing on different fronts of the strategic rights-struggle and the struggle for commons (public goods such as land, education, health, water), a struggle for decent
livelihoods and human dignity. It is a pedagogical space—an infrastructure where legal consciousness meets grassroots mobilization and organization to generate jurisprudence and community agency that serves the struggle for social justice and human rights.
LEH Strategic Focus Areas.
LEN is organized around six interconnected focus areas:
- Public Interest Litigation (PIL): strategic legal action in defense of the commons- public goods and
against structural injustices, guided by community-defined priorities.
- Participatory Action Research and writing: movement-led social investigations into law and policy
that document harm, expose injustice, and inform legal strategies, and, produce journals that
documents the struggles of social movements to be their own agency. - Alternative Justice Systems (AJS): Reviving community-based traditions and mechanism to resolve
disputes. A system rooted in dialogue, equity, and restorative justice. - Public Participation: Facilitating community influence in legislative and policy processes through organized voice and legal knowledge aimed at bringing strategic sectors of law and politics to the
public domain. - Technology and the Law: Leveraging digital tools to broaden access, democratize information, education and communication. Further exploring the intersectionality between AI, the law and politics.
- Court Solidarity: Building collective response mechanisms to support human rights and social
justice activists facing criminalization or repression of civic and democratic spaces.
Structure of LEH
Membership (Network):
Networks forming the LEN1. Legal practitioners
2. Community organizers
3. Legal students and Paralegals
4. Domestic Workers Network
5. Waste Pickers Network
6. Community Health Workers
7. Matatu Workers Network
8. Ecological Justice Network
9. Arts for social change
10. Participatory Action Research and writing
11. Court Users’ Committee
Strategic Intent
Our strategic plan focuses on building infrastructure for legal empowerment through:
Legal cafés and clinics.
Creating a network of law students, paralegals, lawyers, community legal volunteers, and social justice activists grounded in social justice education and community practice.
Documentation and publication of legal developments to shape a social justice archive and narrative.
Training programs and community-led legal awareness campaigns.
Building social justice movements that are anchored in the struggle for social justice and dignity.
Conclusion
The LEH is an experiment in reclaiming the law as a tool to build community agency. We seek to support the construction of legal strategies that challenge oppression, defend life, dignity, and livelihoods.
As we walk with social justice movements, we recognize that courts do not deliver social justice, it is demanded, organized for, and won in struggle.
Developed by:
Waringa Wahome
Secretary, Steering Committee Legal Empowerment Hub.
Gacheke Gachihi
Chair, Steering Committee, Legal Empowerment Hub, and
coordinator, Mathare Social Justice Centre