Role of arbitration in promotion of access to Justice as mandated by Article 48 of the constitution’s Of Kenya

The dissertation concludes with reflections on the future of arbitration in Kenya, and the need for modification and harmonization of arbitration laws for peaceful resolution of disputes and serious conflicts within the Kenyan Jurisdiction. This paper explores the possibility of efficiently accessing justice through arbitration. Access to justice is now well entrenched in the current constitution of Kenya 2010 (hereinafter the 20 I 0 constitution) as one of its fundamental pillars. Access to justice by majority of citizenry has been hampered by many unfavorable factors which are inter alia, high filing fees, bureaucracy, complex procedures, illiteracy, distance from the courts and lack of legal knowhow. Arbitration is used to refer to the management of disputes without resorting to litigation. Arbitration has the potential to ensure access to justice for the Kenyan people. This potential should be exploited. Arbitration bears certain attributes that can be tapped and lead to justice and fairness. These attributes include party autonomy, flexibility of the process, non-complex procedures and low cost. This paper argues that arbitration can used in managing disputes effectively since it moves closer to the people e, flexible,expeditious, foster relationships, voluntary and cost-effective and thus facilitate access to justice by a larger part of the population. This paper starts with a brief background and then proceeds to examine the effect of Article 159 of the Constitution, implementation of arbitration, the challenges and opportunities and ends with a short conclusion