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Kenyan women demand an end to femicide as deaths surge [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

After living in Belgium for eight years, Julie Sharon Muthoni decided to return home to Kenya in September 2014 and was excited to set up a new life there. Two years later, her lifeless body was lying on a cold slab in a morgue in Nairobi.

Muthoni had been dumped at a hospital, alive but barely breathing, by an ex-boyfriend. Staff called her mother, Connie Muuru, who rushed to be with her, but it was too late. Muthoni, whom Muuru affectionately called Sharon, had already passed by the time she arrived.

Muuru told openDemocracy that her daughter had been physically abused by her ex-boyfriend, who relied on her financially. When she tried to leave, he trapped her in the apartment they shared for two weeks and repeatedly assaulted her.

“When I saw my daughter’s casket being lowered into the ground, the sorrow and helplessness that engulfed me is something I can never wish on anyone,” she said. “We have never accepted that Sharon really left us.”

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Muthoni’s tragic murder is part of an alarming surge in femicides in Kenya.

Twenty-one women in the East African country were killed by men in January alone, according to Usikimye, a non-profit organisation that campaigns against sexual and gender-based violence (GBV).

Three-quarters of Kenya’s femicide victims are killed by their partners or exes, compared to 15% who are killed by strangers, according to Africa Data Hub, which looked into the deaths of 546 women in the country between 2016 and 2023.

As the deaths spiralled, more than 10,000 outraged Kenyan women took to the streets across the country last weekend to demand an end to femicide. Protests, which were coordinated by Usikimye and other women’s rights groups, took place in Nairobi, Turkana, Kisumu, Mombasa and other towns, with women further motivated by reports of men who have been unconcerned by the rising femicides or have even justified them.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/kenya-femicides-women-demand-end-deaths/

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