Kenya court calls to end prosecution of minors for sex

A gavel sits on a desk in Ottawa, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The Kenya High Court ruled Wednesday that young people should no longer be criminally prosecuted for having consensual under-age sex and be given better access to sex education.

The decision was praised as a “landmark ruling” by rights campaigners, who have long criticized Kenyan police for arresting young people instead of providing better education and support.

Sex education and the use of contraception remain taboo in many parts of Kenya due to the strong influence of Christian churches.

The case was brought by the Centre for Reproductive Rights, an international NGO based in New York, on behalf of three Kenyan teenagers.

One of them, aged 17, was arrested in February 2025 after police raided the home he shared with his 16-year-old partner and charged him with defilement.

The other petitioners are a couple who became pregnant when they were under-age. The boy was charged with defilement and the case was only dropped three years later.

The court ordered that police and prosecutors should distinguish between consensual and abusive sex even for minors below the legal age of 18.

It said the government should coordinate policies “to ensure adolescent access to sexual and reproductive health information and services without fear of criminalization.”

“For too long, the Sexual Offences Act has been used as a weapon against the very young people it was meant to protect and the burden has fallen heaviest on those with the least power to fight back,” said Martin Onyango, a lawyer working with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, in a statement.

“Today’s decision demands that we replace punishment with protection and build a policy and legal framework that supports adolescents rather than destroys their futures,” he added.

The NGO argues that fear of prosecution means young Kenyans “avoid health facilities, leading to higher rates of unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and unsafe abortion.”

Kenyan law prescribes 15 years in prison for sex with a child between 16 and 18 but the country’s statistics do not differentiate between offenders, making it hard to know how many minors have been imprisoned for consensual sex.

Kenya saw an estimated 792,000 abortions in the year to May 2024 -- one of the highest rates in the world -- according to a recent study by the Ministry of Health, African Population and Health Research Centre and the Guttmacher Institute.