Nairobi, Kenya – As individuals world wide mark Valentine’s Day with flowers and chocolate, Kenyan girls are mourning. A whole lot of them donned black outfits and held lit candles and pink roses at a vigil in honour of greater than 30 girls who’ve been murdered within the nation in 2024.
Wednesday’s vigil in Nairobi – which featured impassioned calls to motion and musical performances – was organised by the Finish Femicide Kenya Motion, a collective of greater than 1,000 organisations and people. “Darkish Valentine” vigils had been additionally held in six different cities amid rising cases of femicide, which have captured nationwide consideration.
“Flowers aren’t lovely on a casket,” says a message in Swahili on a shirt worn by lots of the mourners in Nairobi.
The vigils purpose to strain the federal government to deal with the calls for of the motion, which embody declaring femicide and violence towards girls as a nationwide emergency and establishing a fee to eradicate each.
Organisers say they deliberate the occasions on Valentine’s Day to attract consideration to “the darkish realities” of gender-based violence and girls being killed by these they love.
“The tragic toll of ladies killed by their companions or members of the family [are] was sensationalised media headlines,” a press release from the motion reads.
In line with Finish Femicide Kenya, responses to those murders by authorities and politicians “focus [on] sufferer blaming” and are “stuffed with misinformed recommendation urging girls to watch out to not meet with strangers”.
Figures from the Africa Information Hub reveal that husbands and boyfriends – not strangers – are the perpetrators of two-thirds of murders of ladies in Kenya.
“It leaves many people asking, ‘The place will we go when house is the place we … could possibly be killed?’” the Finish Femicide Kenya Motion assertion reads.
The vigils observe nationwide marches in January by which 20,000 Kenyans took half to demand authorities motion on stopping and prosecuting circumstances of sexual and gender-based violence and femicide, which they are saying are sometimes uncared for. Advocates proceed to lift consciousness and foyer for legislative change and in gentle of what they are saying are challenges in navigating the felony justice system.
A tedious course of
In line with Njeri Migwi, govt director of Usikimye, an organisation that rescues survivors of gender-based violence, they typically can not entry justice due to varied obstacles, together with lack of knowledge of their rights. Survivors additionally face frequent refusal of cops to analyze intimate accomplice violence, which “they contemplate to be a nuisance”, she tells Al Jazeera.
For people dwelling in poverty, pursuing justice may be expensive too, Migwi explains. These prices embody taking public transportation, acquiring medical paperwork and probably paying bribes to acquire a police report (about 200 shillings, or $1.25).
As a part of submitting a police report, survivors of sexual assault should receive a bodily examination from a physician and a type confirming they’ve been assaulted. This type prices both 1,500 or 2,000 shillings ($9.80 or $13) to acquire, relying on the survivor’s location. In line with Usikimye, many survivors are unable to afford this price and thus can not doc their circumstances.
These prices worsen an already cumbersome course of that requires survivors to travel a number of instances between a police station and authorized gender-based violence clinics or hospitals to fill out paperwork earlier than police could open a file to start an investigation.
“The method could be very tedious … particularly for individuals in low-income areas and casual settlements. Most individuals don’t know what justice seems like,” Migwi says.
Step one, nonetheless, requires police cooperation, in keeping with Tracey Lichuma, authorized counsel on the Federation of Ladies Legal professionals in Kenya, which gives authorized help companies to girls and trains authorities on easy methods to reply appropriately to gender-based violence.
“I ask [clients] in the event that they reported to police, and so they say, ‘I went to the police, and so they refused to offer me a type or [case] quantity.’ With out a police summary, there may be nothing that may be executed, even when we [lawyers] wish to transfer heaven and hell,” Lichuma tells Al Jazeera.
Her shoppers report that police typically invalidate and dissuade them from submitting reviews in circumstances of sexual and gender-based violence. “You’re pregnant now. How will you anticipate this man [the accused] to assist your little one if he’s in jail?” an officer could ask.
A police spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
As soon as survivors receive a police report, they need to navigate Kenya’s felony justice system, which, in keeping with Lichuma, is underresourced, leading to backlogs. Throughout this time, she says, survivors lose hope and, along with witnesses, are routinely intimidated, blamed and shamed by the accused and different neighborhood members, so the survivors refuse to testify in court docket or drop the costs.
In 2023, Kenya commissioned 12 sexual and gender-based violence courthouses, which completely take care of these felony circumstances. Whereas this transfer has been extensively hailed, activists like Migwa say the courts are already overwhelmed and they aren’t gender-sensitive and trauma-informed, which might hurt survivors.
A consultant for the newly commissioned courthouses was unavailable for remark. Nonetheless, their web site states that judicial officers on the court docket have been educated “on the intricacies associated to SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence], together with survivors’ wants and are geared up to deal with the complexities of such circumstances with utmost sensitivity”.
In line with Lichuma, many survivors are unaware of reporting necessities, corresponding to needing to be medically examined instantly following an assault and proving their case “past an affordable doubt”. Moreover, quite a few survivors say perpetrators bribe their approach out of felony fees.
“There are those that get headway with the justice system, and there are those that are failed,” Lichuma says.
‘We all know the system’
There are a number of examples of a sample of neglect and denial of justice to victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, activists and analysts say.
In 2013, a 16-year-old woman strolling dwelling from her grandfather’s funeral was gang-raped by six males, severely crushed and left for useless after being thrown right into a 3.5-metre (12ft) latrine.
The rapists had been ordered to mow a garden for a number of weeks, triggering widespread outrage, protests and worldwide condemnation, which finally led to 15-year jail sentences for 3 of the lads. Nonetheless, the decision and sentences had been each efficiently appealed, and the lads didn’t serve jail time.
Connie Muuru has little belief in authorities after spending years searching for justice for the 2016 homicide of her 29-year-old daughter, Julie Sharon Muthoni.
In line with Muura and quite a few media reviews, Muthoni was taken to the hospital as she was getting ready to demise by her boyfriend, who had allegedly crushed her past recognition. Muura rushed to the hospital, however when she arrived, her daughter was already within the mortuary.
Since then, Muura has sought justice, following up with police relentlessly after officers informed her the boyfriend had fled the nation.
“I suspected that the police maybe helped him escape,” she says. “He didn’t have time to succeed in that place [Uganda, where authorities claim he is] as a result of I reported it inside hours.”
Battling extreme despair, Muura prioritised her well being and stopped following up with the police. She heard about circumstances by which survivors of gender-based violence or their members of the family die by suicide attributable to hopelessness. In response, she began a assist group of 10 different girls, all moms of murdered youngsters.
“We all know the system,” Muura says. “We see that police all the time ignore circumstances in the case of girls and women abuse and murders.”
Well-known girls are additionally a part of the saddening statistics. When world-renowned Olympic runner Agnes Tirop was stabbed and crushed to demise in 2021, her accomplice was the one suspect. Whereas awaiting trial after two years in jail, he was launched on bail in late 2023 attributable to good behaviour.
With circumstances corresponding to these and on the heels of marches, memorials, and media consideration surrounding femicide, advocates are hoping to leverage momentum to enact change.
Migwi is one in every of them. She says Usikimye is at the moment searching for a lawmaker keen to introduce a invoice that, in keeping with the motion, would assist sort out the “institutional tolerance that’s permitting femicide to take root”.
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