Lady Justice Joyce Aluoch is one of Kenya’s top ranking judges, and among the longest serving women in the Judiciary. She is the first Kenyan to serve as Judge of the International Criminal Court.
Lady Justice Joyce Aluoch is vigour, humour and grace personified. These attributes must have aided her amazing rise to become Kenya’s first judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), barely three months after her promotion to the Court of Appeal.
Also elected First Vice-President of the ICC from the African Group of States for a three-year term from March 2015, Aluoch, holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Nairobi and diploma in Legal Studies from the Kenya School of Law.
It was not that women were not working hard. We were working as hard as the men. On top of that, we were mothers and wives
Aluoch never at any point imagined herself as a lawyer, working with the immigration service when she completed ‘O’ levels. “When I completed my form four, I worked with the immigration service, where I was coincidentally trained by former Attorney General Amos Wako’s mother, Alice Amwomo.”
When Aluoch passed the ‘A’ level examination, she knew she wanted to be a social worker after her short stint with immigration. Her father had other ideas. She accompanied him to work one morning and they ended up at the Kenya School of Law, where they saw the principal, who was a family.
The visit cemented Aluoch’s career journey, as she later graduated from the University of Nairobi with a degree in Law. She joined the Judiciary as a District Magistrate 1 immediately after completing her studies.
When she launched her career in law, Aluoch was determined to rise up the ranks. This was no mean feat because at that time, the number of women in the Judiciary was small. If ever there was need for affirmative action, it was then.
She therefore took it as a personal mission to advocate for more women in the Judiciary. She ran mentorship programmes to help prepare women lawyers to aspire to be magistrates and judges. The task was difficult because the process of promoting women serving in the Judiciary was agonisingly slow.
“It was not that women were not working hard. We were working as hard as the men. On top of that, we were mothers and wives. I did not understand why our efforts would take so long to be acknowledged and appreciated.”
Despite the challenges, Aluoch climbed steadily up the ladder. She was the second woman to be appointed High Court Judge after her school mate and colleague, Effie Owuor. She wistfully recalls how as the only two women in the Judiciary, they were not entitled to house allowance because they were married.
One day, the two made an impromptu visit to the President at State House, Nairobi. They drew his attention to their plight as married women civil servants and the unfair treatment they were receiving. The equal treatment women civil servants currently enjoy may well be seen as the fruits of the tenacity and boldness of the two pioneering female judges.
Her journey to the top was tough. Aluoch got married and had her first child while she was still a student at the University of Nairobi. She remembers juggling the roles of mother, student and later judge.
“When I was nursing my babies, I would be at home in the mornings and have court sessions in the afternoons. This slowed things a little,” an understatement, as she is quick to acknowledge that being a mother and a judicial officer posed “an amazing challenge” to her career.
After her appointment as district magistrate, Aluoch steadily rose through the ranks to attain High Court Judge status, a position she held for 20 years. She was the first chairperson of the Committee of African Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and vice chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child between 2003 and 2009.
The former judge of the Court of Appeal also served on the task force on sexual offences in Kenya that culminated in the Sexual Offences Act of 2006.
Aluoch regards her election as a judge of the International Criminal Court at The Hague as her proudest accomplishment. “I won the election with 100 votes from 108 countries.” She adds that the voting was by secret ballot at the General Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute in New York. “I was a replacement candidate. At the time, I had just finished my masters and I was very busy with matters of the Court of Appeal, so I had no time to sell my candidature to garner votes. God pulled me through,” she says.
The judge earned a master’s degree in International Affairs from Tufts University in the US through online modules. She considers her postgraduate studies another major accomplishment, which served to make her tech-savvy. “It was extra hard…I literally lived in my office, where I had the Internet.” In 2015 Tufts granted her a distinguished alumni award, in recognition of her great service to the society.
Having reached the pinnacle of international justice, Aluoch is not really concerned about the future. She is, making the most of her time at The Hague, as she awaits the end of her term in March 2018.
Aluoch wishes the Kenyan Judiciary nothing but the best. “It was the home where I grew up and became the woman I am now.”
The top judge describes her driving force as her passion for what she does. When she does something, she says, she always aims to give it her best shot and she never forgets to pray.
Notwithstanding the top perch she occupies on the global judicial stage, Aluoch is concerned that Kenyan women on the rise, especially in the Judiciary, rarely sustain their positions, a situation, she says, makes her sad.
She spends some of her spare time doing community service. Since moving to The Hague, Aluoch has joined the Rotary Club and has served as chairperson of the club’s community services committee. She is also an active member of the American Protestant Church of the Hague and maintains a gym routine to stay healthy. The judge continues to mentors young girls and women, her way of giving back to the communities around her in Kenya and in the Netherlands.
Aluoch reminisces over her work with child welfare and hopes to pick it up after retiring from the ICC.