The war on femicide is intensifying with more women rights activists castigating the crime. By February 2024, at least 224 women were reported to have been killed with a sharp increase from the 170 cases reported in 2023.

Speaking during the Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) annual forum, grassroots women activists across the 47 counties on Thursday, put pressure on the government to address the crime.

“Accelerating action equally entails formulating specific laws and putting in place policies that comprehensively address femicide,” said Mary Simat, the board chair of Defenders Coalition.

Simat argued that women and girls have been forced to take precautions to ensure their own safety and well-being including at home – a place where they are to supposed to be secure.

“The rising cases of gender-based violence and femicide serve as a constant reminder that little effort is being done to ensure such cases are comprehensively dealt with,” she added.

This comes as the Technical Working Group on Gender-Based violence including femicide, is expected to submit a report to President William Ruto on how to tackle femicide.

The 42-member team led by Nancy Baraza was appointed on January 9, 2025 and was to submit a report within 90 days.

Some of the areas President Ruto wanted the team to delve into is recommendation on prevention, response, investigations, prosecution, data management, and survivor support systems in GBV and femicide cases.

The Baraza-led team was tasked with analysing the adequacy of current legal and policy frameworks in addressing GBV and femicide, examining the role of social media coverage in GBV and femicide, conducting community engagements to gather input on solutions to combat GBV and Femicide among others.

“Our bare minimum for this taskforce will be to ask the government to criminalise femicide otherwise what is going on will continue and it is going to be bad. In January alone, we have 40 cases of femicide recorded,” said head of Programmes for the Defenders Coalition Gloria Madegwa. 

The women rights defenders cite poor investigations of cases, slow prosecutions of the perpetrators hence failing to hold them to account for their crimes and consequently failing to inspire confidence within the criminal justice system.

“Criminal justice actors must make deliberate efforts to ensure that all perpetrators of such crimes are brought to justice. A clear message must be sent out to deter any other potential perpetrators,” she added.

This year’s WRHD’s forum under the theme Accelerate Action, was aimed to call for all relevant authorities to act to bring to an end the GBV and femicide against girls and women as cases reach crisis levels.

“The death of every woman means a loss of our nation, communities and families. It cannot be business as usual when women and girls are brutalized with no redress in place,” said Simat.

According to Simat, the intentional killing of women in some of the most brutal ways by intimate partners, relatives, siblings and other associates paints a true picture of where the patriarchal society has placed women.

“Such crimes only instill fear in women, hoping that they do not become the next victims. As a result, excessive caution must be taken just for them to feel a bit safe,” Simat added.

According to Beverline Anyango, a representative from the UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights unpaid domestic labour has become a key driver in violence against women and girls.

“Some of these cases are emanating from women who do unpaid work at home being abused for petty things such as poorly cooked food. This is also a dynamic we are keen on as a trigger to GBV,” added Anyango.

Anyango added that elderly women in the villages are also the silent victims of GBV and femicide.

“We have seen cases of old women beyond 6o years being raped, robbed and even killed. We must also be on the lookout for this category of women, “she added.

As the world gears towards celebration of International women Day on March 8, 2025, Kamau Ngugi, Defenders Coalition executive director called on concerted efforts to eliminate violations against women and girls including rape, defilement, physical abuse and killings.

“These women are breadwinners, they are young women with a future, but they are killed just because they are women. We should stop being statistics builders and humanise these numbers,” said Ngugi.

He noted that 224 women killed within a year are statistics that should concern everyone. Ngugi added that the women’s forum will come up with recommendations which will be submitted to the technical working group.

“We hope that there will be a continuation so that the Parliament and executive can also now listen, and that the society will also listen. We must insist that Kenya will be the safest place for our women, our girls to thrive,” he added.