Legal and Psychosocial Support

The Legal and Psychosocial Support Programme is the largest programme in RCK and its overall goal is to ensure that refugees and other forced migrants access justice.

Key activities carried out under this Programme include:

  • Provision of legal counseling to asylum seekers and refugees
  • Provision of legal representation in the Refugee Status Determination process and in courts of law on immigration related cases
  • Networking with other referral refugee agencies to ensure that refugees are provided with critical assistance
  • Maintaining a country-wide probono lawyer scheme to assist in legal representation of asylum seekers and refugees in different parts of the country
  • Maintaining a protection monitors and detention monitors scheme to assist with identification of vulnerable cases within the refugee community and making interventions at the police stations
  • Watching brief in sexual and gender based violence cases
  • Instituting public interest litigation cases related to asylum cases and protection concerns of refugees and other forced migrants

 

The Programme also has a psychosocial support unit that provides the following:

  • Provision of basic psychosocial support and counseling to traumatized asylum seekers and refugees
  • Provision of micro-grants to survivors of gender based violence
  • Maintains a community based counselors who act as the “first-aiders” to traumatized clients and act as a link between RCK and the refugee community
  • Provision of a child friendly space in both urban and the refugee camps for refugee children
  • Conducts home visits to identify vulnerability of persons of concern
  • RCK engages IDPs and host communities in Nakuru County; Rongai Sub County on peace building with a mental health and psychosocial support aspect.