What a Year it Has Been!
Tags: Human Rights, Gender Based Violence, Kenya, Womens Rights, Gender Equality

This piece was originally published in print in The Nation Kenya on Human Rights Day, December 10, 2020.

Year 2020 was set to be a season of milestones for women and gender equity: Five years into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 10 years since the establishment of UN Women, 20 years since the landmark UN Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, 25 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and 15 years since the adoption of the Maputo Protocol. The year promised an opportunity for reflection, commitment, and action.

As we celebrated the start of a new decade with pomp and confetti, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as the curveball no one anticipated.

Today, while everyone is facing unprecedented challenges, women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fallout of COVID-19. The pandemic has threatened to reverse decades of gains, demonstrating that the impacts of crises are never gender-neutral.

For the single mother in many parts of the country, the lockdown posed a challenge to her ability to cater for her family financially.

Many middle-class homes let their domestic workers go, rendering them unemployed. A majority of domestic workers in Kenya are female. The closure of school and daycare centres across the country shifted the burden of home schooling and unpaid care to women in the households. For working mothers, this has meant balancing fulltime employment with childcare and schooling responsibilities. For girls, the likelihood of them returning to school diminishes greatly after a prolonged absence. This is just partly how the situation disproportionately affects them.

A surge in domestic violence has also been witnessed, with rescue houses busting at their seams and helplines buzzing incessantly. Cases of female genital mutilation, teen pregnancies and early child marriages that present life threatening, health and human rights violations, have soared during this period as well.

Economic uncertainties have pushed some parents to marry off their underage children in exchange for some financial reprieve. These marriages violate girls’ rights and leave them at increased risk of depression, lifelong violence, disabilities, and even death — including from childbirth, given that their bodies simply aren’t ready to bear children.

The pandemic has not only led in a surge in human rights violations across the country, but has also revealed the cracks and inadequacies in our systems and structures. This has been the case on many fronts, including gender based violence.

The Government’s lockdown and other containment measures during the pandemic were necessary but unfortunately were not cognizant of the potential exposure of girls and women to violence and abuse. The pandemic added a layer of complexity for victims, making it dicey to report an abuser during lockdown, as they would probably be a few metres away at any given time.

Stifled income earning opportunities, loss of jobs and livelihoods have provided a fertile ground for gender-based violence to thrive. Due to curfew measures, inaccess to health facilities, judicial services and police stations has hampered redress to victims of abuse.

But the story isn’t complete. We still have a chance to edit the ending.

Global headlines are turning a corner; turning to the hope a vaccine may bring to the world in 2021. But while we watch for a brighter future, the daily struggles women face continue, every day, right here in homes throughout Kenya. The vaccine won’t reverse those losses. Just as the government was tasked with implementing measures to curb the spread of coronavirus, they must take concrete steps to quell the epidemic of gender-based violence.

We call on the President of Kenya to declare ZERO tolerance for gender-based violence, by the end of the year.

The ZERO tolerance policy must come with an action plan that includes funding women’s shelters, safe houses and essential organisations working to provide GBV services, preventing GBV through mobilisation campaigns and actions like cash transfers, distribution of food and sanitary towels, and safe WASH facilities, responding to cases of GBV with medical care and treatment, 24-hour hotline/counselling and legal aid services, and collecting data to better understand this shadow pandemic and improve the delivery of all of the above.

There is still time. There is still hope. There is still an opportunity to take proactive measures.

Global governments, civil society, and leaders from around the world will be meeting in 2021 at the UN Women’s Generation Equality Forum to renew commitments to gender equality and chart a course for a gender-equal world.

The Government of Kenya, along with Iceland, the UK, and Uruguay, will be leading an Action Coalition against Gender-Based Violence and the world will be looking to them to lead by example. But women should not have to wait. Before a commitment can be actualised on a global stage, we challenge the President to start leading by example today and declare ZERO tolerance for gender-based violence in Kenya.

#16toZERO

Message Endorsed by

Janet Mbugua — Founder, Inua Dada Foundation

Amina Abdi Rabar — Media Personality

Jerry Santo — Retired Professional Footballer

Libby Ndambo — Musician

Pinky Ghelani — Media Personality

Doreen Moracha — HIV/AIDS Activist

Peter Ouko — GBV Activist