Femicide is not homicide: Urgent, specific actions need to be taken

Kenyan women and human rights organisations match along the streets of Nairobi to protest against the rising femicide cases in the country. [Collins Oduor, Standard]

This year’s 16 days of activism against gender-based violence campaign seems set to take on greater significance. With the substantial spike in femicide cases, it is time for new agencies and actors to join the faithful feminists who raise awareness and demand that men stop killing women.

Femicide is very different from homicide. Femicide is the killing of women because they are women, Professor Awino Okech would school us. Treating the deliberate dismembering and demise of women and girls as the usual homicide statistics blurs this rising threat.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Eliud Lagat’s call for a national response while revealing the police are handling one death every 24 hours over the last three months was welcome if not deeply worrying. Combine this and Africa Data Hub’s findings that four out of five cases are perpetrated by people who intimately knew their victims.

Women murderers are fathers, husbands, lovers, uncles, cousins or neighbours. Now add, three out of four killings take place in Kenya’s 12 million households. 53 years after Gill Scott Heron wrote his iconic poem, it would seem “home is (sadly, still) where the hatred resides”.

On 27 January, the #EndFemicide movement tipped 10,000 of citizens onto the streets to protest the national crisis. At the time, the Criminal Investigations Director had contradicted Femicide Count Kenya statistics by claiming that only 94 deaths had been reported to them in the last three years. The President remained silent despite public requests for him to rally his administration to prevent more deaths. Parliamentarians hesitated with the idea of a specific Femicide Act or tightening and resourcing existing legislation. Ten months later, femicide has raised its ugly head again.

The horrific torture, mutilation and killings of Waris Daud, daughter Amina Abdirashid (21), Nuseiba Dahir (12), Catholic nun Yvonne Jirangwa (21) and others, combined with the staggering figure of 4,000 women and girls treated monthly by Nairobi Women’s Hospital must inform new commitments.

Last month, several civic organisations and public benefits organisations publicly demanded President Ruto appoints a Gender Cabinet Secretary, regular police updates, the categorisation of femicide as a stand-alone offence in the penal code and public sensitisation to avoid femicide becoming normalised. Four days later, President Ruto committed new resources to the police service and called on all agencies to decisively act.

The National Crime Research Bureau has been tasked with documenting online and offline violations. Technology facilitated gender-based violence is an area too few understand or know how to interrupt.  This week, the Catholic Episcopal Conference demanded the security services, and the government do more.
 
The 16 days public awareness campaign rallies are expected to start on November 25, and end on December 10, which is also the International Human Rights Day. As we approach this annual events, we must expand synergies. Police officers, policy makers and parliamentarians must find ways of working with feminist campaigners, civic organisations and citizens at county and national levels.

Together, we can make the Internet a safer space by framing anti-discrimination narratives, offering emergency apps, better use of GPS tracking and online platforms for reporting. Technology, like AirBnB, is neutral. Both can be designed for safety or risk.

Together, we can make our homes a safer place by establishing community-led awareness campaigns, helplines and surveillance systems that report suspicious activities. See something, say something campaigns have been very effective. We need men to have more conversations with men and boys about toxic masculinity. Most testimonies behind the statistics reveal crushed men struggling with confident women.

Given the widespread economic distress, and as we wait for the Cabinet’s macro-economic statistics to catch up, can we accelerate economic empowerment programmes and another round of legal reforms and tighter law enforcement?

It is time to act together once more and end the killing of our women.

It is time to act together once more.