What Does Justice Look Like from The Perspective of the Person with The Least Power?
By Ms. Susan Nzomo
Perhaps justice looks different when you are sitting at a desk designing a compensation programme.
It looks different when you are the young person who went home from the June 2024 protests with a wound that never healed.
Different when you lost your livelihood.
Different when your health changed.
Different when someone you loved never came home.
And different again when you discover that your name is not even on the list.
Two years after Kenya’s Gen Z protests, the country has established a KSh 2 billion reparations programme for victims of human rights violations linked to protests and demonstrations. The programme has begun compensating verified victims.
But KNCHR has itself acknowledged that many additional cases were documented after the initial report was finalised and recommended that they be considered in subsequent processes.
That raises a difficult question:
What happens to the person who was harmed—but was never counted?
For the young people Hakimani Eastern Africa has been walking with in Mukuru through the Beyond the Protests project, this is not an abstract policy question.
For a year, Hakimani has accompanied young people whose lives were affected by the protests—listening to their experiences, supporting their pursuit of justice and ensuring that their stories do not disappear when public attention moves elsewhere.
Some lives ended that day.
Others continued—but not as they were before.
A scar can be invisible and still change a person’s entire future.
And this is where we must challenge ourselves.
Government cannot define justice only by who appears on a verified list.
Donors cannot define impact only by the number of people reached.
Civil society cannot define advocacy only by the number of reports produced.
And human rights defenders cannot afford to stop when the headlines disappear.
Because justice must be tested from the position of the person with the least power.
Can they access the process?
Can they be heard?
Can they challenge exclusion?
Can they obtain remedy?
Can they see accountability for what happened?
And can they rebuild a life that was changed through no choice of their own?
Importantly, even the official reparations programme recognises that compensation is only one part of the response and does not replace accountability for violations.
So the question for government, donors, CSOs, human rights defenders and every institution working for justice is simple:
Are we designing justice for the system—or for the person who needs it most?
Because if the person with the least power cannot access justice,
how much justice have we really delivered?
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