March to denounce increased cases of femicides in the country in Nairobi dubbed #EndFemicideKe ended in teargas and more abuse from police officers.
In videos seen online, activists were seen being harassed by plain-clothes cops a sad trend being normalized by the authorities.
The violence has been called out by netizens including Law Society President Faith Odhiambo who observed: “The habit of violent response by police to Kenyans expressing their constitutional right to demonstrate and picket is increasingly becoming incorrigible. There is absolutely no justification for attacking, arresting, and interfering with harmless Kenyans agitating for the protection of women, especially when the threat of violence against women is, ostensibly, a national crisis.
“The Police must refocus their energy on ending and fighting atrocities, not perpetuating them. We support ending femicide, and we support all the brave Kenyans who came out today to call for the overdue change.
The #EndFemicideKe march comes amid outrage after constant reports of women killings across various counties in the nation. Femicide in Kenya is increasingly becoming a national emergency and an ugly scourge that must stop.
Regrettably, femicide cases continue to reignite the all-too-familiar insidious misogyny conversation around violence against women and girls online. You might think that in 2024, these verbal postmortems would call out men and ask them to stop killing/being violent but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
What is femicide?
Femicide is the intentional murder of women because they are women and the most extreme form of gender-based violence (GBV).
There are two categories of femicides; intimate -the killing of women by current or ex-partners and non-intimate femicide -the killing of women by people with whom they had no intimate relationship.
Most cases of femicide are committed by partners or ex-partners and can range from abuse at home, threats or intimidation, sexual violence or situations where women have less power or fewer resources than their partner according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
How to stop femicide
Among the best practices would be a government action plan for femicide reduction and prosecuting the abusers.
An intentional change in cultural and social norms ranging from “masculinity and femininity, gender equality, domestic violence and femicide laws, patriarchal ideology, traditional values, the role of religion in society and media coverage of femicide and violence against women.”
Remarkably, here’s what doesn’t work: reminding women of the ‘made-up safety rules’ from what to do or wear, and how to behave to avoid becoming victims of violence.
Safety rules aggressively perpetuate women are second-class citizens with an added duty of deferring to the unalienable rights of violent men to exist. They are false assurances and no amount of caution is a deterrent for a man intent on taking away your life, making you feel degraded and/or humiliated for his pleasure.
Also, the idea that any woman would need reminding of these made-up ‘rules’ – when they have been seared into our collective consciousness since childhood – is laughable.
Just stop killing women!
