Judiciary extends deal with AGA to upscale fight against graft
The Judiciary has signed an an extended MoU with the Attorney General Alliance (AGA) Africa into a fresh capacity building partnership.
According to the Chief Justice Martha Koome, the agreement comes at an opportune time when the judiciary is embarking on revamping its judicial education and training.
“It is therefore great to have AGA-Africa on board as our first partner in this journey into a bold future for judicial education in Kenya,” Koome said.
She said that in the Social Transformation through Access to Justice Vision for the Judiciary, realisation of the dream of establishing an accessible, efficient, expeditious, cost-effective, and fair system of justice was anchored on having an inspired team of judges, judicial officers, and Judiciary staff committed to excellence in the delivery of justice.
The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding by the Director of JTI, Supreme Court Judge Smokin Wanjala, and AGA-Africa Board member Markus Green was witnessed by Kenya’s Chief Justice Martha Koome in Mombasa today.
The MoU replaces the 2019 agreement with the then Conference of Western Attorneys General of the United States of America (now Attorney General Alliance), which is a bipartisan group originally of Western States but currently represents an association of Attorneys General, Federal, State, and foreign officials, public and private sector partners throughout the world, including Africa.
Justice Wanjala noted that in three-year period, JTI in collaboration with AGA-Africa it has trained over 100 judges from various courts on cybercrime and electronic evidence and over 130 magistrates in human trafficking.
In addition Green said that AGA-Africa seeks to establish and foster robust relationships with justice and law enforcement agencies throughout Africa, to support the rule of law and combat transnational criminal activities.
AGA-Africa has a presence in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.
“Our work has allowed us to collaborate with law enforcement agencies on the continent sharing best practices on a variety of transnational crime areas including, forensics, cybercrime, counterfeit drugs, human trafficking, wildlife trafficking, money laundering, and asset forfeiture, virtual currency and countering corruption,” Green said.
Areas of cooperation under the extended MoU include development of a physical and electronic JTI library, publication of annual or biannual journals covering diverse aspects of jurisprudence growth, intellectual dialogues, and pioneering thought leadership.
It also provides for capacity building for Supreme Court and Court of Appeal Judges in transnational organised crime and other identified areas including election dispute resolution training.
The training sessions will be extended to law clerks and legal researchers who support the judges.
JTI is mandated to coordinate continuous judicial education for judges, judicial officers, Judiciary staff and conduct research and develop draft policy relevant to the administration of justice.
