Prof. Hannelore Van Bavel and Prof. Samuel Thuo Kimani (University of Nairobi), together with co-promotors Dr Paulien Broens and Prof Gily Coene were awarded a VLIR-UOS project: "Co-creating Decolonial and Community-Driven Pathways to Strengthen Kenya’s Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Framework".
The project co-creates community-driven pathways to strengthen the implementation of Kenya’s Anti-FGM/C framework in ways that better protect girls and women in FGM/C-affected communities. It pursues three main objectives: generating empirically grounded knowledge on how the Act is produced, implemented, and contested; examining how community members experience and navigate the law in practice and facilitating dialogue on what improvements or adjustments they consider workable; and strengthening interdisciplinary, participatory research capacity at the University of Nairobi and VUB.
Innovatively combining legal anthropology and participatory action research (PAR), the project links macro-level legal and policy analysis to micro-level ‘living law’ (i.e., the norms and practices through which law is interpreted and enacted in everyday life) and everyday experiences of harm, care, and justice. Rather than predefining solutions, the research documents and translates locally articulated insights into practical guidance materials and policy briefs, developed in continuous collaboration with implementing actors so they can inform ongoing programming and legal implementation. In the long term, the project seeks to inform more inclusive, accountable, and context-responsive approaches to addressing FGM/C within Kenya’s existing legal framework.