Betty Kaari Murungi Biography, James Orengo’s Wife

Betty Kaari Murungi is a lawyer of international repute and a mother and wife to firebrand politician James Orengo.

Like her husband, the Siaya Governor, she was involved in the clamor for multi-party democracy in the late 80s and 90s.

Betty Kaari Murungi Children

Betty Kaari Murungi is the wife of James Aggrey Orengo. The experienced lawyer is a mother of six: Bob Orengo, Steven Orengo, Michael Orengo, Zeni Orengo, Josephine Orengo, and Lynette Orengo.

Education

Murungi attended the Kenya School of Law at the University of Nairobi. 
In the years 2005-2006, she was a visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Murungi started out as a commercial lawyer before she veered off to international criminal law after the 1994 Tutsi genocide.

In 2022, United Nations Human Rights Council picked the lawyer-alongside law professor Steven Ratner and former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda-to probe violations in the Tigray conflict. 

Betty Murungi attended the University of Nairobi School of Law before proceeding to the Kenya School of Law.

She spent a year as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program researching Transitional Justice Mechanisms. 

Betty Kaari Murungi Career

Betty Kaari Murungi started her career as a commercial lawyer representing banks and insurance companies. It was during this time that she joined the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA)-Kenya, a women lawyers’ organization that offers legal services to indigent women.

In between, she was involved in the fight for democracy in Kenya during the reign of the late president Daniel Arap Moi. 

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For more than a decade, she worked in the prosecutor’s office at the ICTR to ensure the investigation and prosecution of crimes against women.

Along with her colleagues, they monitored from the outside and worked with the genocide survivors of Rwanda.

She was among the people who worked on the Akayesu case, a case that expanded the definition of rape. 

Between 2009 and 2010, Betty Kaari Murungi served as Vice Chairperson and Commissioner to the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission. 

Between 2009 to 2013, she was the African representative on the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court. 

Between 2018 to 2019, she was a member of the independent Commission of Inquiry for the occupied Palestinian Territory appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In 2020, she was appointed Professor of Practice at the Center for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London. 

Her career has seen her work in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Northern Uganda, and South Sudan.

Awards

In 2003, Betty Murundi received the Kenya National Honor of the Moran of the Burning Spear for her efforts in Human rights activism. In 2005, she was awarded the International Peace Advocate Award by the Cardozo Law School in New York.