Trauma in Human Trafficking Cases in Kenya

Listen to Justice Hannah Okwengu sharing the IAWJ Kenya Chapter experience in learning how to deal with trauma in human trafficking cases. This experience was made possible with the support of an IAWJ project. The initiative also allowed the IAWJ Kenya Chapter to produce a judicial bench book against labor trafficking. You can access the bench book below.

Read the bench book

The presentation was given on the panel on "Trauma-Informed Courts" at the 16th IAWJ Biennial Conference. Many of those appearing before our courts as both witnesses and parties are suffering from trauma. This trauma can be individual, collective (such as from the long-term effects of colonization), or both. The most recent of our anti-human trafficking grants, in Kenya and Uganda, have focused on the impact of trauma on witness testimony and the strategies for making courts more accessible to traumatized parties and witnesses. The panel shared some of the lessons learned from those projects as well as hearing about how trauma has been accommodated in other contexts.