On January 27, for one afternoon, Kenya was confronted with an often-hidden tragedy: femicide. That day, the streets of downtown Nairobi were filled with protesters. Women, especially, loud and determined, marching to the cries of: “Stop killing us!”On the signs they are holding up, the same messages are printed in black ink: “Stop Femicides in Kenya”, “There is no justification for killing a woman”According to the organizers, there are more than 20,000 of them. A few men are also present, but they are not very numerous.
A few weeks earlier, the sordid murder of two young women, Starlet Wahu and Rita Waeni, aged 26 and 20, as well as the murders of fourteen other women were at the origin of this unprecedented protest movement. Never had Kenyan women been so numerous in the streets to denounce femicides.
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Between the discovery of several dismembered women’s bodies found in a dump in July and the murder of Ugandan marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei, burned alive by her ex-partner in Kenya, where they lived, on 1is September, the problem remains.
“Nothing has been done since the January demonstrationlaments Muthoni Maingi, the national coordinator of the End Femicide Kenya movement. The government must make the fight against femicide a national priority. According to the WHO, 47 women are killed every week in our country. This is one of the highest rates on the continent. » In 2023, 152 femicides were recorded by the organization Femicide Count Kenya. A figure that could be underestimated, due to unreported cases.
“A deep misogyny”
“Femicides in Kenya are a long-standing problem. It goes back to at least the early 1990s.”Muthoni Maingi estimates. In 1991, 71 schoolgirls were raped and 19 killed by boys from their school. “The issue has simply become more visible today”considers the coordinator of End Femicide Kenya.
Sitting in her small living room in a Nairobi suburb, Audrey Mugeni, an activist with the organization Femicide Count Kenya, has been working on the issue for a dozen years. On a corner of her desk, two books: Counting Feminicide (MIT Press, not translated), directed by the American researcher Catherine D’Ignazio, and the novel On Black Sisters’Street (published in French under the title The Morgana girlGlobe, 2022), by Nigerian author Chika Unigwe, relating to African sex workers in Belgium. “Femicides are made possible by certain deep structures in our society, explains Audrey Mugeni. One of them is religion, which places morality on women. There is also deep misogyny and violent hatred towards women.”
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“Patriarchy is a very strong component of Kenyan societyabonde Muthoni Maingi. It is the product of several eras: the dictatorship [de Daniel arap Moi, entre 1978 et 2002]colonization, Christianization… It is a long and complex construction.” To Audrey Mugeni, “All this has resulted in a definition of success that differs according to gender. For a woman, success will be having children and a husband. For a man, it will be having money and power. If a woman has power and money, it becomes questionable.”
In 2018, two murders shook the country: that of Sharon Otieno, a student killed by former Migori County Governor Okoth Obado, and that of Monica Kimani, a businesswoman killed by her lover. “Instead of mourning their deaths, people said they deserved what happened to them. In the case of Monica Kimani, because she had money and was an independent woman, it was said she was probably a prostitute. As for Sharon Otieno, when her alleged killer came out of custody, people applauded him.”raconte Audrey Mugeni.
Empty counters
In January, after the murders of Starlet Wahu and Rita Waeni, the Media Council of Kenya had to remind journalists that reporting on the two cases should “remain factually accurate and objective, opposed to sensationalism and the portrayal of gender bias”The reason: the description in the press of the two victims as sex workers of dubious morality. “The description of victims as people without morals is recurrent”deplores the activist.
There are texts that are supposed to protect women, “but their implementation poses problems”continues Audrey Mugeni. A few years ago, counters to collect complaints from women victims of violence were set up in each police station. “There are offices to receive complaints, but there is no staff. These counters are empty, and when there is someone it is a person who is not trained in this type of case.”late Zaina Kombo of Amnesty International Kenya.
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Another problem: Some women seem to view violence against them as legitimate. A study on Kenyan health, published in July 2023, revealed that four in ten Kenyan women found it understandable for a husband to hit his partner if she refused to cook, came home too late, refused to have sex, neglected her children or burned the meal.
Recognizing femicides in law
To change things, activists are calling for femicide to be recognised as a separate crime. “At the moment, all murders of women are categorized as homicides.. This category, which is too broad, does not allow us to clearly say that a woman is killed because she is a woman.”explains Zaina Kombo.
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Muthoni Maingi, for her part, looks to Mexico, where femicide is enshrined in law. While the inclusion of this crime in the penal code has not reduced the number of women murdered there, it has, on the other hand, led to greater awareness of the phenomenon in society and the implementation of public policies.
In the early 2020s, a Kenyan series, Crime and Justicefor the first time depicted a femicide on screen, inspired by the murder of Sharon Otieno, ordered by the former governor of Migori County. A feature film, based on the same story, is currently being written. Perhaps a sign that mentalities are changing. “This is commendable, but it remains an exception. Much more should be done.”, conclus Muthoni Maingi.
