As the leading a consortium of Kenyan and international institutions implementing the UKaid : Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded CSOs led Timiza Ugatuzi (Kenya Devolution Programme-KDP) which is the successor of the Kenya Devolution Support Programme and AHADI we were honored to partner with The County Assemblies Forum (CAF) in undertaking an Assessment of Quality of Legislation for the 2nd Session County Assemblies.
Timiza Ugatuzi aims to contribute to making devolution more effective in Kenya with particular emphasis on improving service delivery and poverty reduction.
The objective of the Quality of Legislation Assessment is to:
- Assess the Quality of Legislation for 2nd Session County Assemblies;
- Establish a Comprehensive set of Benchmarks for Quality of Legislation; and
- Provide Proposals to inform Capacity Strengthening Efforts for technical staff and Members of County Assemblies on law-making for 3rd Session County Assemblies
As part of the inception phase, CAF held a meeting with stakeholders to Review the Assessment Tool for the Quality of Second-Generation County Legislation. The meeting took place on the 17th of March 2022 at Sarova Stanley, Nairobi, with representatives from the Senate, Kenya Law Reform Commission (KLRC), National Council for Law Reporting (NCLR), County Assemblies of Laikipia and Nairobi, Society of Clerks-At-The- Table (SOCATT), and Council of Governors (COG).
The assessment tool outlines the key question for consideration when reviewing legislation and uses a 5-point rating scale where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest score for each assessment question. The assessment questions are clustered in eight assessment criteria: Purpose of Legislation; Substance of Law; Constitutionality of the Law and consistency with existing Policy and Legal Framework; Format of Law; Targets of the Legislation; Prudence in use of Public Resources; Impact and Enforcement of the Law; and Measurability of the Results of Legislation. The next phase of this assignment is collecting and analysing data as outlined in the assessment tool. It will focus on the priority devolved sectors of Water, Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Health and Urban development.
