Kelvin Mbatia Wachira is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Teaching Fellow at Strathmore Law School. He facilitates the learning of International Environmental Law and Policy and the Law of Evidence. He also coordinates student attachments and the student mentorship programme at the Law School.

Kelvin holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) specialising in Environmental Law from the University of Nairobi (2023), a Post-Graduate Diploma in Law from the Kenya School of Law, and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B., Second Class Upper Honours) from the University of Nairobi (2018). Prior to his academic career, he trained as an advocate at Kaplan & Stratton Advocates, one of Kenya’s leading commercial law firms.

His scholarship focuses on Public International Law (PIL), more so, the intersection between the general principles of PIL  and the subfields of International Environmental Law, International Water Law and the Law of the Sea. He is committed to expanding oceans and water law scholarship and education in Kenya and across Africa, with a particular focus on the implications of sea-level rise for African coastal states’ maritime zones and the role of UNCLOS dispute settlement mechanisms in advancing climate justice. He is also leading research in the fields of Land Law and Land Use Planning and the Governance of Urbanisation for Sustainability. 

Beyond the academy, Kelvin has engaged substantively with government and multilateral processes. He has facilitated treaty law training for state counsels at Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), most recently on the Monitoring and Evaluation of Treaties (2023) and the Law of Treaties (2022). He has led action research on community land rights for communities in the informal settlements and co-developed a climate justice curriculum for a national civil service organisation.

Kelvin holds specialist certifications in the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Law, Sustainable Development Goals and the Law (both University of Cambridge, 2023). 

Climate Change: A Fundamental Change of Circumstances in the Nile Water Agreements (LL.M Project, 2023)
1. ‘The Threat of a Rising Sea Level: Saving Statehood through the Adoption of Uti Possidetis Juris’ Strathmore Law Review, Volume 5 Issue 1 (2020).
2. ‘A Race on the Run: Overcoming Racism through Ubuntu and Moderate Communitarianism’ The Platform Magazine, Issue 56 (August 2020).
Law Society of Kenya