I recently attended a cultural event in Malindi where poets, musicians, singers and mental health counsellors came together to remind us that September is Suicide Awareness and Prevention Month.

It was an entertaining afternoon, which is perhaps one of the more effective ways to discuss subjects that are otherwise difficult to approach. Performers and speakers reminded us that suicide prevention is about breaking stigma, recognising warning signs and making it easier for people to ask for help without being judged, lectured or told to pray harder.

We were encouraged to check on friends, family and loved ones, particularly those who seem unusually quiet or withdrawn. Sometimes, apparently, the person who says, “I’m fine” is not actually fine.

The message was simple: pay attention, listen, create a safe space for people to talk and take changes in behaviour seriously.

Sitting in the audience, however, I found myself thinking about something slightly different. We Kenyans are remarkably good at complaining about how little progress we have made since Independence. And there is certainly plenty to complain about. But we are perhaps less good at noticing the occasions when we have actually moved forward.

Take suicide, for instance. Attempted suicide is no longer a criminal offence in Kenya. This is not a trivial achievement. It represents a fundamental change in how the law views someone in the middle of a mental health crisis.

In January 2025, High Court judge Lawrence Mugambi declared Section 226 of the Penal Code unconstitutional. The section had allowed a person who attempted suicide to be imprisoned for up to two years.

The court recognised the rather important distinction between someone committing a crime and someone experiencing a crisis. In other words, the state eventually arrived at the revolutionary conclusion that someone who is trying to end their life may require help rather more urgently than handcuffs.

Parliament subsequently moved to remove Section 226 from the Penal Code, shifting the emphasis from punishment towards medical treatment, psychosocial support and rehabilitation.

This is part of a broader transformation in Kenya's legal system that deserves more attention than it receives.

We tend to think of our laws as an immovable collection of ancient commandments, preferably written in dense legal language and occasionally interpreted by someone wearing a ridiculous wig. Yet over the years, a number of punitive and colonial-era provisions have been dismantled.

Freedom of expression, for example, has undergone considerable legal expansion. In 1997, Kenya repealed colonial-era sedition laws that had been used to criminalise criticism of government and political leaders.

Then, in 2016, the High Court declared criminal defamation unconstitutional, recognising that imprisoning people for speech was an unjustifiable restriction on freedom of expression.

Every so often, Parliamentarians appear to read the Constitution and continue to work through some of the remaining restrictions on expression, including provisions concerning incitement to violence and the burden of proof.

The same gradual shift can be seen in capital punishment. We had a de facto moratorium on executions since 1987, although the law continued to provide mandatory death sentences for certain offences. In 2017, the Supreme Court's landmark Muruatetu decision declared the mandatory death penalty for murder unconstitutional, restoring judicial discretion.

Further penal reforms have continued that process, replacing mandatory death sentences with structured alternatives, including life imprisonment.

Then there are the old vagrancy laws, which were particularly useful if the objective was to criminalise poverty. Colonial authorities used them to control people considered undesirable in urban spaces. Being unemployed, homeless or merely in the wrong place could attract the attention of the police.

Kenya eventually repealed the Vagrancy Act in 1997. More recently, advocacy has encouraged alternatives, such as community service, rather than filling prisons with people whose principal offence is having very little money.

Then there is ‘Rafiki’, the Kenyan film that spent years discovering that apparently a love story could be considered a national security emergency.

In 2026, a landmark court ruling overturned the long-standing ban on the film, reinforcing the principle that artistic expression cannot be censored simply because someone finds its subject uncomfortable.

None of this means Kenya has suddenly become a paradise of enlightened governance. The wheel still turns painfully slowly, occasionally gets stuck in mud and sometimes appears to be travelling backwards.

But it does move. And perhaps that is worth remembering.