Issue No.24

An Overdue Movement: Kenya Confronts its Femicide Crisis

The #EndFemicideKenya movement has triggered one of the largest waves of social activism in recent Kenyan history. The scale of the movement's ongoing demonstrations is fitting, given the urgency of Kenya's femicide crisis. On 27 January alone, thousands of demonstrators in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, and other cities protested the more than 30 gender-based murders committed that month. As if to underline the importance of the demonstrators' message, sceptical bystanders in Nairobi chanted, "We will kill you" in a widely circulated clip on social media.
 
On the spectrum of gender-based violence (GBV), Amnesty International describes femicide as the most extreme form. It is the principled act of murder directed at women because they are women. In Kenya, activists have argued the problem is systemic, and statistics support their claim. At least 500 gender-based killings have been reported since 2016, with most cases committed domestically by a friend, relative, or partner, and often in a gruesome manner. A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, however, reported an even higher tally, with 725 murders in 2022 alone. Regardless of the exact number of murders, a third of Kenyan women and girls have suffered sexual violence before age 18, and almost half of Kenyan women experience GBV during their lives. The domestic abuse helpline Usikimye, 'don't be silent' in Swahili, receives upwards of 150 calls a day from women of all backgrounds.
 
The situation is likely more dire than the statistics indicate. According to the Africa Data Hub, Kenya has a "notable absence of consolidated data." Recognising this gap, movement leaders are demanding the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics prioritise quality data collection. Other demands are similarly sensible and achievable. They include a National Plan of Action to tackle GBV, gender balance requirements in public bodies, responsible standards for reporting GBV, prioritisation of femicide cases within the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, and the outright criminalisation of femicide as a distinctive form of murder.
 
Even as organisers distance themselves from partisan political interests, the #EndFemicideKenya movement is innately political. Demonstrators have urged the Kenyan government to declare femicide a 'national emergency,' explicitly tying structural misogyny in Kenya to the GBV epidemic. On social media, activists have called for a countrywide anti-femicide campaign led by the government. Meeting these demands is well within the government's ability, but action has been slow.
 
Kenya's judicial system has also failed to address its massive backlog of GBV cases. Law Society of Kenya President and demonstrator Eric Theuri has highlighted the critical shortage of "about 100 judges" as well as "200 magistrates and adjudicators." With the "wheel of justice grind[ing] slowly," suspected offenders of GBV and femicide can leave custody after paying their bonds. In the months and years between their arrest and trial, if it ever gets that far, many re-offend. Kenyan police have been repeatedly accused of failing to take cases of GBV seriously, allowing perpetrators to continue freely committing crimes.
 
Some politicians have even shared derogatory remarks, either blaming victims for their murders or focusing on unrelated drivers of violence. For example, Member of Parliament Sabina Chege of Murang'a County said on 30 January, "What comes easy goes easy. Girls need to know how to work hard. There is no free money in this world." It appears lost on Chege that nobody is asking for free money, nor that no relationship exists between how 'hard' a woman works and her likelihood of being murdered.
 
South Africa's own movement targeting an end to GBV and femicide should give Kenyan activists some hope. There, President Cyril Ramaphosa and the government launched a National Strategic Plan, calling GBV "a blight on our national consciousness and a betrayal of our constitutional order." But even with a degree of political will, funding and training police and government officials on legislative changes in South Africa has been insufficient, and reform has been slow. Still, the spotlight the #EndFemicideKenya movement has thrown upon GBV should be capitalised upon to begin the critical reforms that are so urgently needed to protect women and girls in Kenya.

By the Horn Edition team