On February 20, the Government of Kenya published Gazette Notice 1092 in Volume CXVII-No. 17 of the Kenya Gazette announcing the “establishment and appointment of an Expert Committee to review and develop a detailed policy and legal framework to regulate and manage child adoptions in Kenya.” Gazette Notice 1092 also revokes Gazette Notice No. 15639 of 2013 appointing the National Adoption Committee. You can download a scanned copy of the Gazette.

According to the notice, the Expert Committee is charged with reviewing domestic and intercountry adoptions procedures and developing simplified guidelines for such review.  Additionally, the Expert Committee will “review and make decisions on all applications for resident and inter country adoptions that had been initiated before the issuance of the moratorium.”

No information on how the Expert Committee will carry out its tasks or the timeline for any actions under its purview is yet known. The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and the Office of Children’s Issues have confirmed with other receiving countries active in Kenya that the Government of Kenya has not provided diplomatic missions with clarifying information on the scope of the moratorium or how pending cases will be addressed since the implementation of the moratorium in late November 2014.

We will update this webpage as soon as information becomes available.