Judiciary lists court-annexed mediation achievements 10 years after introduction

The Judiciary has listed achievements of the Court Annexed Mediation(CAM) since its launch in 2016.[Jenipher Wachie, Standard]

The Judiciary has listed the achievements of the Court-Annexed Mediation (CAM) since its launch in 2016.

The State organ also outlined plans to ensure the programme is exercised in all court stations across the country by July, 2026.

Among its greatest achievements is the ability of the program to save Sh103 billion back to the economy for the past 16 years.

“We have seen a lot of improvement and uptake. As we speak right now, just in the last year, we had about 9,800 cases that were filed with a total value of approximately Sh63 billion. Most of those cases, about 8,800 with a value of about Sh25 billion, were actually resolved,” said Paul Ndemo, deputy chief registrar of the Judiciary and its Spokesperson.

He added: “If you look at the time we started CAM in 2016 up to now, we are talking about approximately Sh103 billion as the value of cases that have been released to the economy.”

Ndemo was speaking during the three-day mediation summit that started yesterday at Strathmore University in Nairobi with the theme: The Role of Mediation in Resolving Family, Children and Succession Disputes: Bringing Peace and Harmony in our Families and Society.

He revealed that the Judiciary has plans to ensure that CAM registries are available in all 143 court stations across the country from the 121.

“Our target by the end of this financial year, in July, is that the registries are available across the country. In terms of the budget allocation, we in the last three years from 2023 started with Sh50 million, then Sh70 million and now Sh80 million and in the next financial year, we have set aside Sh100 million to pay mediators,” said Ndemo.

He called the government for more resources to ensure more cases are handled through CAM.

Omondi also said the private settlement agreements, which were launched in 2024 by Chief Justice Martha Koome, have increased to 70 so far.

Justice Aggrey Muchelule, Judge of the Court of Appeal in Kenya, urged more Kenyans to embrace CAM.

“Not many Kenyans know that we have only just about 1000 judicial officers, including the CJ, from the lowest magistrate to the highest judge, who is the CJ, and we are serving a population of 55 million Kenyans. Those 1000 hands can't be able to hear and determine on our cases on time as required by the litigants,” said Justice Muchelule.

He added: “So we must have a multi-door approach to the resolution of cases, otherwise we shall die of backlog. Mediation is one of the ways of resolving disputes. It rests on the basis that you want a friendlier dispute resolution mechanism that restores relationships.”

The Judge said in the Court of Appeal, they recently began with a pilot project of mediation  and have so far resolved three appeals in Nairobi, with some resolved in under 90 days, but had stayed for over 20 years.

“We had to begin with the training of judges, mediators, and that background has been set, and we are going to roll out mediation in the Court of Appeal in a large way and then in the Supreme Court because the law encourages it to do so. We plan to launch mediation in the Court of Appeals that we have just opened in Kakamega, Meru and Eldoret,” he added.

Lady Justice Hellen Omondi, who is also a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Kenya and who spoke on behalf of Chief Justice Martha Koome, talked more about how mediation has helped resolve many cases.

She said Kenyans should remember that Article 45 of the Constitution recognises the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society, and which needs to be protected through mediation, which restores relationships.

“To protect this unit, we must acknowledge that it truly "takes a village" to sustain a family. Legal battles won in the courtrooms are hollow if they leave a home in ruins. By choosing mediation, we aren't just clearing backlog; we are inviting the "village" mediators, the judicial officers, and the parties themselves to collaborate in healing the bonds that hold our society together,” said Justice Omondi, who is also the President of International Association Of Women Judges, Kenya Chapter.

She said mediation was first introduced in the Kenyan Judiciary through the Family Division, a deliberate choice recognising that family conflicts are deeply personal and carry emotional weight that can reverberate across generations.

“While disputes are an inevitable part of human interaction, the adversarial 'win-lose' nature of traditional litigation is particularly ill-suited to the intimate setting of the home,” Justice Omondi added.

Harriete Chiggai , Special Advisor to the President on Women’s Rights, said Kenya’s experience with mediation, particularly through CAM, provides compelling evidence of its transformative impact.

She cited the Judiciary of Kenya, 2023;  Chief Justice Martha Koome's official reports on CAM, which indicated that mediation has achieved a 92.3 per cent success rate, resolving over 16,770 out of 18,162 cases and releasing approximately Sh 52.1 billion into the economy, with average resolution timelines of about 73 days.

“These outcomes are not simply administrative efficiencies; they represent restored livelihoods, preserved families, and accelerated economic participation,  especially for women, who are often disproportionately affected by delayed justice,” said Chiggai.

She added, “Beyond efficiency, mediation has emerged as a critical instrument for advancing women’s rights in Kenya. Access to justice remains a cornerstone of gender equality, and the expansion of mediation has significantly improved this access.”

Ms Chiggai said that, according to national justice sector and UN Women programme data, the resolution rate of gender-based violence (GBV) cases increased from 58.2 per cent to 98 per cent, alongside a 40.5 per cent rise in resolved cases (UN Women Kenya Progress Reports, 2022).

She said her office has anchored the widows’ programme as one of our priority objectives, as we discovered that widows endure serious obstacles to access to justice in succession disputes, land and family disputes, and many other matters that arise as a result of widowhood.

“We have therefore developed a Widows Manual that advocates for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as a pertinent tool to access to justice,” she said.

The Advisor called upon the government to look at critical areas where intervention can further strengthen mediation systems.

These include the development of digital dispute resolution platforms to expand access, particularly in remote areas, institutionalisation of mediation within devolved governance structures, enhancement of data systems to track outcomes and inform policy and the need to strengthen collaboration across the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary to ensure coherence in legal frameworks, resource allocation and implementation strategies.