In Kenya, Protesters Push for Women's Right to Life

Protestors in Kenya have promised to continue to rally against an epidemic that is currently ravaging the country. On January 27, 2024, the East African country had its largest-ever protest against femicide and violence against women. Staged in multiple cities, Nairobi, the country’s capital, saw thousands of demonstrators surge through the streets in collective frustration, holding placards and banners that read, “Stop Killing Us!” and other similar messages of urgency.

On X (formerly Twitter), hashtags like #SayNoToFemicide have galvanized many on the internet, drawing attention to a national scourge that has claimed the lives of a dozen women this month alone. Videos of Kenyan men, including Sauti Sol’s Bien-Aime Baraza, joining the protest were welcome sight, as they publicly indicated a communal response towards ending the brazen murder of women. Baraza is one of the country’s celebrities who joined the call for an end to femicide. “Today we walked. May we never have to walk for this again. May we be more united by our joy than our pain. Sending love and light to all my sisters out there. I love you,” he wrote on Instagram.

Other videos captured weren't so welcoming, showing the country still has a long way to go in sensitizing men to female autonomy, dignity and the right to life.

A key demand of the protests is prosecution of perpetrators, most of whom go unpunished. Between 2016 and 2023, Kenya recorded at least 500 reported femicide cases, with the actual number of unreported instances believed to be significantly higher. One in three women in Kenya has experienced sexual violence before turning 18, according to the Gender Violence Recovery Center.

While Kenya’s alarming levels of violence against women has remained systemically unsolved, it was the murder of Rita Waeni that sent shockwaves across the country in the run up to the protests. 20-year-old Waeni, a Kenyan student, had been found brutally murdered in a rental apartment in Nairobi on January 14. The gruesome murder had involved decapitation and dismemberment.

“The government is very concerned about growing cases of crime and murders, mostly targeted at women in short-term rental spaces. Whereas most of these spaces are termed as Airbnb, they are not transacted through the Airbnb platform and thus there is no Know Your Customer (KYC) data collected, obviously a major security exposure,” Moses Kuria, Kenya’s Public Service Cabinet Secretary, said.

At the moment, Kuria looks to be the only top government official who has spoken against the wanton killings of women in Kenya, and promising a crackdown on the culprits.