HABIL ONDIEK: Stop killing women, blaming victims

Reading and watching news in Kenya has recently become overly traumatising.

While one may argue that Kenyans have adapted to the wave of depressing news, considering that stories of cross-cutting corruption and incompetence in service delivery are the signature topics in media updates, the unfolding wave of femicide should horrify and unsettle even the most nonchalant. 

The United Nations defines femicide as a “gender-based murder of women and girls”. Femicide may be driven by stereotyped gender roles, discrimination towards women and girls, unequal power relations between women and men, or harmful social norms.

The chilling CCTV footage that was recently released by the DCI, showing the prime suspect in the murder of four women exiting a short-term stay room with a garbage bag believed to have contained the chopped remains of one of his victims, is almost unbelievable.

The footage, coupled with many similar cases of heinous killings mainly targeting women, has understandably sparked debate, albeit disjointed, on the possible causes and mitigation measures of the crisis.

However, the worrying observation is that these debates largely fall short of unequivocally condemning the killings. In many instances, the talking points seem to blame the victims while absolving, to some extent, the perpetrators.

Debates on this topic will rarely proceed without interjection with the question ‘why are women being killed?’. Unfortunately, what this question insinuates, consciously or unconsciously, is that these killings are justifiable in some instances. Why would anyone attempt to justify the abhorrent killing of women?

This insensitive approach to the topic not only dominates discussions but also veers into progressive spaces. Strangely, various strategies aimed at empowering women are replete with stereotypes that may further embolden those targeting women.

Recently, I was honoured to attend the launch of a women’s league branch of a popular political party in Kenya. One of the objectives of this formation is to advance the rights of women by challenging underlying class structures that reinforce many levels of oppression of the female gender. 

The first action plan of their strategy is to understand the cause of the exponential rise in femicide cases in Kenya.

Glaringly, however, the action plan goes further to suggest as a working theory that recent femicide wave could be attributable to male reaction to the uncultured women empowerment that challenges historical male dominance.

Simply put, women are being killed because they are intruding into spaces that are traditionally reserved for the male gender. How such a strategy is meant to empower women when it openly integrates stereotypes that demean its target group defies logic.

After months of public pressure for action from the highest levels, the President was finally obliged to make a strong statement on the crisis on November 20, 2024.

Accompanied by a host of women leaders, he committed Sh100 million of government support to launch awareness campaigns against the scourge.

Although he fell short of declaring the situation a national crisis, majority will appreciate his deliberate use of the word ‘femicide’.

Hopefully, this official designation of the crisis as femicide will spur efforts that have largely been derailed by confusions around semantics that blur the underlying motives of these killings.

Whereas solution to the crisis requires multidimensional collaboration, one would argue that the criminal justice units have been sluggish in their response.

A case in point is the mysterious escape from police custody of the main suspect that was linked to the dismembered bodies discovered at the Kware dumpsite, a majority of whom were women.

That the suspect, who, according to police reports confessed to killing at least 42 women, escaped from police custody highlights serious ineptitude.

With police reports indicating that at least 100 women have been killed in the past three months, and the President promising decisive action, the government must expedite formulation of cogent frameworks to restore sanity before another life is lost.