Rest in Power, Njoki Njoroge Njehû
Njoki Njoroge Njehû speaking at an event photographed for YES! Magazine, 2004. Photo: Orin Langelle/Global Justice Ecology Project.
Our dear friend, colleague, and founding Board member of Global Justice Ecology Project, Njoki Njoroge Njehû, passed away peacefully at her home in Nairobi, Kenya, on Saturday, 18 July 2026.
Njoki was a major figure in the global economic justice movement. She served as director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition of more than 200 organizations founded to challenge the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
She was also one of the principal organizers of the April 16, 2000 demonstrations in Washington, D.C.—known as A16—against the IMF and World Bank. A16 brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets surrounding the institutions and was the first major mobilization against unjust economic globalization following the shutdown of the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999.
Njoki served on the executive committee of Jubilee 2000/USA and was co-founder and director of the Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, a Nairobi-based network supporting grassroots women’s activism, land rights, gender justice, community rights, and environmental justice.
Anne Petermann and I (both co-founders of GJEP) first met Njoki in the late 1990s during a Nicaragua Network retreat in Vermont.
Our friendship deepened and I became a steering committee member of 50 Years Is Enough and eventually served on its board.
Njoki Njoroge Njehû, left, and Soren Ambrose during a World Bank protest in Washington, D.C., 2004. Photo: Orin Langelle/Global Justice Ecology Project.
During the years of mass mobilizations against economic globalization, I spent many nights sleeping on the floor of the Washington, D.C. apartment Njoki shared with her husband, Soren Ambrose. There were many dinners, many conversations, and many bottles of wine.
After Njoki and Soren moved to Kenya, Anne and I once again found ourselves sleeping on their floor—this time during the 2006 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi.
During that visit, Njoki took Anne and me on long, bumpy rides through the Kenyan countryside, showing us the rural communities where she was working with the Daughters of Mumbi. She did not speak about grassroots organizing from a distance. She was part of it.
Our paths crossed many times over the years. I remember Anne and I joining Njoki to celebrate two birthdays of another mutual friend and colleague, the anti-apartheid activist and poet Dennis Brutus, who had been imprisoned on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was also held.
I will always remember Njoki as an outspoken woman who was never afraid to confront injustice. She was powerful, formidable, and uncompromising—but also a generous friend with whom we shared laughter, meals, political work, and years of common struggle.
There is one story about Njoki that I will never forget.
I was in Washington, D.C., during one of the annual World Bank meetings, after the street protests had receded. Njoki had been invited onto Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, and Fox sent a cab to pick her up.
During the interview, O’Reilly remarked in his typically snide manner that because there had not been large World Bank mass-protests in several years, no one talked about or remembered them anymore.
Njoki smiled and replied:
“You’re wrong, Bill. I’m on national television with you, and you’re still talking about it.”
Her rapid response left O’Reilly almost speechless.
Njoki was born and raised in Kenya. She credited her mother, Lilian Njehû, a community and church-based activist, with giving her the first lessons in activism and advocacy. Like her mother, Njoki also participated in Kenya’s Green Belt Movement.
She earned a B.A. in Women’s and Third World Studies from William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and later studied development communications at Cornell University in Ithaca.
In a 2004 article, YES! Magazine described an experience that helped shape Njoki’s understanding of international solidarity. While attending the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, she heard Aboriginal Australian activist and artist Lilla Watson say:
“If you have come to help me, I don’t need your help. But if you have come because your liberation is tied to mine, come let us work together.”
Women in a rural Kenyan community where Njoki Njoroge Njehû worked through the Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, 2006. Photo: Orin Langelle/Global Justice Ecology Project.
Those words stayed with Njoki. They reflected the way she lived and organized: not through charity or paternalism, but through the understanding that our struggles—and our liberation—are bound together.
Njoki was married to our friend and colleague Soren Ambrose, another major figure in the global economic justice movement, who died in December 2020. Both Njoki and Soren were founding Board members of Global Justice Ecology Project. Their lives and work touched people and movements around the world, and they remain an essential part of GJEP’s history, spirit, and culture.
Njoki’s death is an immeasurable loss. But her courage, political clarity, commitment to grassroots movements, and refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice will continue to guide those who knew her and those who carry the struggle forward.
¡Njoki Njoroge Njehû, presente!
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