Strategic Litigation & Movement Collaboration
We work with movements, civil society organisations, and development partners to use the law as a tool for systemic change.
Our approach is embedded, collaborative, and built on almost a decade of feminist and decolonial legal practice within the African human rights system. We do not start with a case. We start with the problem — and we work with you to determine where the law can play a role and how to deploy it most effectively.
Strategic litigation is most powerful when it is placed within a continuum of advocacy. We understand both its limits and its potential, and we bring that understanding to every engagement.
Movement Lawyering & Convening
Our role as movement lawyers is to translate justice for and with movements — not to lead, but to partner.
We believe lawyers hold a particular kind of power as convenors. We harness that power to bring movements together, facilitate collective action, and build the tools of justice that generate systemic, cultural, and political change.
In practice this means supporting consensus building and priority setting within and across movements, helping movements identify the cases and legal strategies that align with their broader advocacy goals, centring the stories of the communities at the heart of the work, and building legal empowerment so movements can engage the law as a sustained tool — not just in individual moments of crisis.
Our stories do not start or end with a case.
Reproductive Justice & Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights
Sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) are increasingly contested. Anti-rights actors are organised, well-resourced, and operating across jurisdictions. The rights that took decades to establish — in law, in jurisprudence, in normative frameworks — are being challenged, narrowed, and in some cases reversed.
Strategic litigation is one of the most powerful tools available to defend and advance these rights. When cases are selected well, argued innovatively, and placed within a broader continuum of advocacy, they can name and define rights, articulate normative standards, slow down anti-rights actors, and surface the stories of movements and communities.
We collaboratively develop cases with the strategic potential to advance jurisprudence, counter retrogression, and push the needle on sexual and reproductive justice. We do not take cases in isolation. We take cases as part of a deliberate strategy, designed with the movements and individuals at the centre of the issue.
Collaborative Resource Mobilisation
High-stakes litigation requires resources. The gap between a strong case and an executed case is frequently a resourcing gap — and it is one that movements and organisations should not have to navigate alone.
We support partners in bridging that gap by drawing on our networks and experience to identify aligned funding opportunities, provide risk-aware advisory on funding compliance and multi-party resource allocation, and draft financially and legally sound proposals, grant agreements, and resource-sharing frameworks.
This is not a standalone service. It is a capacity we bring to partnerships where it is needed — always in service of the litigation strategy, never in place of it.
Multi-Stakeholder Project Collaboration
Some of the most important work in strategic litigation happens in the space between a case and a movement — in the complex, cross-sectoral project ecosystems where litigation is embedded alongside research, advocacy, and community organising.
We design and participate in these ecosystems. We have led and co-designed multi-year, multi-disciplinary projects with budgets ranging from $30,000 to $2,000,000, including initiatives in Western Kenya linking reproductive justice with land, property rights, and community structures.
We are experienced at managing multi-year, multi-disciplinary initiatives that integrate rights across issue areas and geographies, and at ensuring that strategic litigation remains coherent and purposeful within a broader project architecture.
How we work
We begin every engagement with a conversation about what you are trying to achieve. We then work collaboratively to map where the law can play a role, which cases or strategies are worth pursuing, and how litigation connects to the broader advocacy work already in motion.
Our engagements are structured around a letter of engagement that defines scope, timeline, and responsibilities. The initial consultation is free.
We work on complex matters that require legal innovation and a multi-disciplinary approach. We always begin by problematising the law — surfacing the inequality and inadequacy in existing frameworks — before we determine how to challenge it.
Track record
STRATEGIC LITIGATION
Safeguarding and defamation
Successful defence against the weaponisation of defamation law against an organisation implementing safeguarding policies to protect victims of sexual harassment.
Right to Health
Unlawful incarceration of TB patients
Constitutional litigation challenging the incarceration of TB patients as a public health measure. Lead counsel for Erick Okioma, Esther Nelima, Chris Owalla, and KELIN.
SRHR
Right to safe abortion - Court of Appeal
Petition concerning access to safe abortion under the Constitution of Kenya. Instructed by the Law Society of Kenya.
Access to Information
Access to information during the pandemic
Constitutional petition concerning access to information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Multi-Stakeholder Project
Rights Under Strain
Multi-year project linking sexual and reproductive justice with land rights and community structures in Western Kenya. Multi-stakeholder initiative integrating research, advocacy, and strategic litigation. Budget range: $30,000–$2,000,000.