By Nicolette Maina | Published 15th December 2025

In 2024, a femicide report revealed a drastic surge in cases with a record number of 170 in just one year. This included Rita Waeni, a 20-year-old university student who was found in a garbage bag in a rental apartment in Nairobi with her body parts dismembered – a case which a government pathologist Johansen Oduor reported that he had “never come across such an incident” in his forensic career.

This truly devastating statistic was double the annual average of 85 cases from 2016 to 2023 – with 97 reported cases of femicide over 90 days from August to October according to End Femicide KE, 2024. Unfortunately, this figure is likely only a small minority of the true number of cases, as most either go unreported or insufficiently investigated. 

Following this consistent killing of women, many Kenyans expressed their dissent with protests and digital activism in January and December 2024. This included the #EndFemicideKE movement, which drew attention to this crisis and sought to address the systematic neglect of victims of gender-based violence. Unsurprisingly, the peaceful protests that took place on December 10^th, 2024 (ironically, International Human Rights Day), were met with brute force, violence and tear gas by the police. This further sparked widespread outrage both locally and internationally, with people as well as human rights organizations condemning the excessive use of force and calling out this lack of accountability which arguably aimed to silence the voices of these protestors. 

Indeed, while gender-based violence has long been recognised as a national concern, the recent escalation in fatal attacks underscores a systemic failure to protect women’s fundamental rights to life. Regardless, the issue continues to persist within the country and is even worsening as from January to March 2025, there were at least 129 reported cases of femicide. 

These patterns of violence link closely to the misogyny embedded into the justice systems in Kenya, as women’s issues are often ignored or dismissed as unimportant. This is largely because a majority of victims are women close to the perpetrators – they are often their spouses and girlfriends – and incidents take place in private spaces like their homes. This means that the victims are generally not taken seriously due to a culture of female devotion to their partners – even when their lives are in danger – despite femicide cases often following incidents of non-fatal attacks. These trends therefore reveal not isolated tragedies, but a broader context in which gender-based violence escalates unchecked.

The systemic injustices also likely stem from a dehumanisation of women in Kenya, where most perpetrators of gendered violence “kill women because they are women”. Arguably, it is the toxic masculinity that is so normalised in many Kenyan households which often manifests itself not only into the perceived entitlement to women’s bodies by men, but the anger and rage that kills so many undeserving women.

Because of these tragedies, the President of Kenya – H.E. William Ruto – appointed a 42-member task force to address the rise in cases of Gender Based Violence in the country. Ostensibly, while this shows an active effort to mitigate these tragedies and re-enforce the law, according to Awino Okech, there is a history by the Kenyan government with “setting up these task forces with financial resources largely directed at remunerating members and conducting “consultations”, only to tell the country what was already known”. This therefore raises the question of whether there is an intention to create tangible change and improve the lives of the women and girls living in Kenya.

Despite what is regarded as a government effort to solve this issue, the corruption that is present in the law enforcement system of Kenya, means that victims and their families ultimately never achieve justice. For example, Collins Jumaisi Khalusa – the prime suspect in the murder of 40 women whose mutilated bodies were found in a dumpsite escaped custody from one of the most secured police stations in Nairobi. Many Kenyans suspect that it was the police who helped him with his escape as a result of bribery, and are outraged that over a year later, the suspect has not been found.

Unfortunately, the cases of Gender Based Violence are not unique to Kenya, with countries like South Africa, Nigeria, DRC, Sierra Leone and many others having high rates of femicide which continue to persist. South Africa in particular has recently seen a similar surge in cases, where many called for the issue to be declared a national disaster and used digital activism through the #WomenforChange movement to raise awareness on this tragedy.

The issue of Gender Based Violence is therefore not something that should be taken lightly as it is part of a continental and global culture where misogyny and the violence it manifests into is considered inevitable, and something that women just have to learn to accept.

Therefore, the #EndFemicideKE movement demonstrates that Kenyans refuse to remain silent in the face of violence and reflects a growing national consciousness that women’s safety is not a marginal concern but a critical human rights issue. 

It therefore calls for a fundamental institutional change in which the perpetrators of these crimes should not walk the streets of Kenya freely, and women should not have to live in the constant fear that they may be the next victim.

Editor: Emma Burgess