Inside Ipoa's ambition to cut down police abuse of human rights

In light of the increasing incidents of alleged police abuse of power and human rights violations, the Independent Police Oversight Authority has rolled out an elaborate effort to ramp up its activities, acquire technology and align policing with human rights standards.

According to its Strategic Plan 2025–2030, the authority wants to launch an aggressive fundraising from development partners to reduce reliance on the exchequer, boost public confidence in its work, hire more staff to strengthen its establishment and retool its operations through digitisation.

To promote compliance with human rights standards and the rule of law, Ipoa aims to reduce the proportion of police officers implicated in human rights abuses from 23 per cent to 15 per cent within the five-year period.

It also seeks to improve complaint resolution efficiency from 59 per cent to 76 per cent.

To promote professionalism in the National Police Service, Ipoa intends to reduce the number of complaints from 4,095 to 3,000 over the plan period.

Moreover, successive Ipoa leadership has been complaining about declining state funding and delay in exchequer releases, hence undermining its capacity to robustly hold police officers accountable.

It is seeking to ramp up its strategic development partnerships to expand collaboration and increase funding. In this regard, the authority hopes to raise support from development partners from the current Sh200 million to at least Sh300 million.

The plan states that annual work plans and performance contracts will be derived from the strategic plan to maintain alignment and monitor progress. A coordination framework will define leadership roles, resource requirements and institutional responsibilities to foster collaboration and efficiency.

To optimise resource utilisation, the Isaac Hassan-led body hopes to achieve unqualified audit status every year for the period of the implementation of the plan by adopting a strategic approach to ensure proper allocation of resources, minimise wastage and enhance service delivery.

This approach aligns Ipoa’s activities with Kenya’s broader development goals, emphasising value addition and operational efficiency, the plan shows.

Additionally, a risk management framework has been incorporated, outlining potential risks and mitigation measures to ensure resilience and adaptability during the implementation period.

The second pillar focuses on enhancing public trust and confidence in the National Police Service and Ipoa. The authority plans to raise its customer satisfaction index from 51.7 per cent to 74.8 per cent and increase public awareness of Ipoa from the current 20 per cent to 30 per cent.

The plan also emphasises improving human capital for effective and efficient service delivery. Ipoa seeks to increase staff strength from the current 25 per cent of approved establishment to 54 per cent in five years.

To realise its mandate and implement its planned activities, the document reveals that it must strengthen its capacity in financial, human, technological and physical resources.

Current staffing stands at 289 against an approved establishment of 1,377, which is inadequate for overseeing the work of more than 130,000 police officers nationwide.

The document shows that with a 32 per cent growth in staff strength between 2018 and 2024, it is already experiencing congestion and overcrowding in its offices.

Currently, Ipoa has nine regional offices but is expected to provide oversight across the country, where more than 3,000 police facilities are spread across 1,450 wards. To enhance its capacity, the authority intends to decentralise services further and adequately equip its offices.

Its end-term evaluation of its retired strategic plan for 2019-2024 revealed a high success rate in its efforts to enhance police accountability, foster stakeholder collaboration and build institutional capacity, the plan shows.

The evaluation was conducted internally and employed an output-based approach, resulting in an overall performance score of 92 per cent.

"Ipoa demonstrated substantial progress in each of the key result area, contributing to its mandate of fostering accountability and professionalism within the National Police Service. The evaluation, incorporating feedback from the authority’s stakeholders and staff as well as the analysis for the performance metrics, provides an exhaustive overview of Ipoa’s accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned over the strategic plan implementation period."

INSTANT ANALYSIS

Through the new plan, Ipoa sets a bold vision of scaling up capacity, strengthening independence and driving professionalism in Kenya’s policing. Its success, however, will depend on whether the agency secures the political support and financial backing required to transform its oversight mandate into tangible improvements in human rights compliance on the ground.