Joyce Aluoch

Education

Lady Justice Aluoch attended Butere Girls" School for her Ordinary Level School Certificate and obtained her Higher School Certificate from Limuru Girls’ School.

Career

She is a lawyer and former judge of the High Court of Kenya. She is the First Chairperson of the Committee of African Union Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and was the Vice-Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child from 2003 to 2009. She has had a pivotal role in negotiations between the African Union and the Government of Sudan to ratify the African charter and secure the rights of children, pursued a fact-finding mission to war-torn northern Uganda on the effects of the war on children, and chaired a task-force aimed at handling sexual offences in Kenya through the implementation of the new Sexual Offences Acting, 2006.

She has a Law Degree from the University of Nairobi, a diploma in Legal Studies from the Kenya School of Law and a Masters Degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

In 1974, Lady Justice Aluoch was appointed as a District Magistrate II (Professor) in the Kenyan Judiciary. After the 1982 coup attempt, the then Kenyan President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi embarked on repressing perceived political dissidents.

Joyce Aluoch was a magistrate in several such trials convicting several political dissidents key among them Onyango Oloo. In 1993 she became a Judge of the High Court.

Until her appointment as a Judge of Appeal in December of 2007 she was the most Senior Judge of the High Court, handling civil, criminal, commercial and family law cases.

She established and served as Inaugural Head of the Family Division of the High Court and simplified litigation in Family Law matters in line with the principles of "just, quick and cheap". Lady Joyce Aluoch was elected to the International Criminal Court in 2009 from the African group of states and her nine-year term will expire in 2018. She is the presiding judge of Trial Chamber IV, which is hearing the cases of Abdallah Banda and Saleh Jerbo.

In a 2015 majority decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber I, Aluoch joined her fellow judge Cuno Tarfusser – with Judge Péter Kovács dissenting – in requesting Interstate Commerce Commission Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to reconsider her decision not to investigate the Gaza flotilla raid on 31 May 2010.

In her role in the Kenya Girl Guides Association(KGGA), Lady Aluoch helped establish the Peer Prevention Programme for Young People. This program is aimed at reducing the spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus virus through the education of girls and women and targets schools in Busia County, Mumias/Butere, Kakamega, Bungoma in the Western Province, Changamwe and Kisauni in the Coast Province.

Nakuru municipality and Nakuru County in the Rift Valley. KGGA is as a key player in Kenya in the fight against Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Achievements

• This was achieved by police brutality, arbitrary arrests and long detentions without trial, torture in the infamous Nyayo House basement cells and sham trials where the accused were sentenced to Jail.

Membership

She has also served as the inaugural head of the family division of the Kenyan High Court and a member of the Court of Appeal. Between 2009 and 2016, she served as member of the trial chamber for the case of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the first case in which the Interstate Commerce Commission has found a high official directly responsible for the crimes of his subordinates, as well as the first to focus primarily on crimes of sexual violence committed in war. Lady Joyce Aluoch became a member of the Olave Baden-Powell Society (OB-Personal) in 1991.