Our Issues

We focus on six strategic issue areas, combining grassroots organizing, legal empowerment, and bold advocacy to advance justice and equity in Kenya and across East Africa.

Our work is driven by interdisciplinary, community-anchored teams, each focused on one of KUZA TRUST’s six core thematic programs. These teams collaborate fluidly across counties, constituencies, and issues responding to emerging challenges with innovation, urgency, and lived experience.

Each issue area integrates advocacy, research, public education, and legal strategies. We work to dismantle structural barriers, strengthen institutions, and center the leadership of marginalized populations in shaping the laws and systems that affect their lives.

We are currently advancing change in the following key areas:

ANTI-DISCRIMINATION

Advancing women’s and girls’ rights to land, safety, bodily autonomy, and public participation, with a focus on widows, girls affected by poverty, and those navigating harmful traditional practices.

DRUG POLICY

Transforming punitive drug laws into rights-based frameworks that prioritize public health, harm reduction, and dignity. We advocate for decriminalization, diversion programs, and access to care not incarceration.

ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Promoting fair and inclusive economic systems for women, youth, and communities historically locked out of land, labor, and livelihood opportunities. We support legal empowerment, women-led enterprise, and social protection.

CLIMATE JUSTICE

Protecting communities affected by environmental degradation, land grabs, and climate collapse. We champion youth-led climate action, sustainable land use, and just transitions that restore ecosystems, advocacy for alternative economic models including legal cannabis regulation as pathways to resilience and justice.

RULE OF LAW

Building inclusive, accountable legal systems that work for the people. We train paralegals, operate grassroots legal aid centers, and engage courts, police, and prosecutors to protect the rights of the most excluded.

ANTI-DEATH-PENALTY & ANTI-TRAFFICKING IN PERSON

Defending the right to life and freedom for East Africans vulnerable to cross-border drug trafficking, wrongful prosecution, and death-row sentencing. We provide legal aid, advocate for clemency and repatriation, and push for systemic reforms that treat survivors with dignity and justice.