On January 27, thousands of Kenyan women took to the streets to demand an end to femicide. The protests, which spanned cities across the country, were the largest ever held against gender-based violence in the country. In the days since then, women have continued to rally online, using the hashtags #StopKillingUs, #EndFemicideKe, and #TotalShutDownKE to voice their anger.
The protests came in the wake of a spate of femicides that have garnered significant public attention. At least fourteen women were killed in January alone; some reports cite as many as twenty-one killings. They include Scarlet Wahu, a well-known online influencer, and Rita Waeni, a twenty-year-old university student who was brutally murdered and mutilated.
For many Kenyan women, these latest incidents are symptoms of a systemic problem. According to a newspaper analysis carried out by the Africa Data Hub, more than 500 women have been victims of femicide in Kenya between 2016 and 2024. This number is likely an underestimate. Some prominent cases, such as the 2018 murder of Sharon Otieno or the 2021 stabbing of celebrated Olympian runner Agnes Tirop, received media attention and triggered previous waves of activism. Many other killings likely never made the news.
Over the past few weeks, protesters have called out the persistent lack of state protection as well as misogynistic attitudes that justify acts of violence by blaming women’s sexuality, morality, behavior, and appearance. Between 39 percent and 47 percent of Kenyan women experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. Yet while some men have joined the marches and publicly voiced their support, others have shown up to accost and antagonize women protesters. Various politicians have also made statements that appear to shift blame onto women. Senator Tabitha Mutinda, for instance, suggested that young women are being killed due to their eagerness to meet men who will finance their expensive lifestyles. These responses underscore the urgency of the protesters’ demands.
Femicides Are a Global Problem
In Kenya, the data collected by Africa Data Hub suggest that over the past eight years, 75 percent of female homicide victims were killed by intimate partners or family members, most often husbands or boyfriends. Approximately 80 percent of these killings took place within the confines of a home.
These findings echo global patterns. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the majority of homicides are committed by men against other men. Yet women are uniquely and disproportionately targeted in the private sphere: 56 percent of female homicides are perpetrated by intimate partners or family members, compared to only 11 percent of male homicides. In 2022 alone, around 48,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by intimate partners or family members. While Africa had the largest number of such killings as well as the highest rate adjusted for total population size, the problem afflicts all regions. In the United States, for instance, the percentage of women murdered by an intimate partner is five times higher than that of men. Echoing the narratives surrounding sexual violence, entrenched cultural scripts tend to shift blame from the attacker to the victim, who is framed as somehow responsible for endangering herself or attracting her relative’s or partner’s wrath.
Activists coined the term “femicide” to mark these killings as a distinct form of violence, noting that women are targeted because they are women. In most cases, these killings are neither spontaneous nor random, but the culmination of systematic domestic abuse. The goal of the femicide label is inherently political: it seeks to draw a connection between gender-motivated killings and misogynistic attitudes, norms, and structures that pervade society and justify violence as a means of disciplining women and controlling their behavior. It also seeks to challenge the lack of state responsiveness to this form of violence, which is rarely recognized and recorded as a distinct offense. Homicide counts may disaggregate victims and perpetrators by gender but generally do not include information about the context and motive for the violence. This gap makes it difficult to assess trends over time or develop tailored policy responses.
Women’s Movements Are Fighting Back
In recent years, women’s mass mobilization in several countries has successfully drawn greater public attention to the problem.
In Latin America, the #NiUnaMenos movement that originated in Argentina has been particularly influential. Pushed to action by a series of brutal femicides, Argentine women took to the streets in 2015 to demand systemic political and social change. Their protests quickly morphed into a broader movement, which in subsequent years has used online campaigns, grassroots activism, and mass demonstrations to raise public awareness, connect survivors, encourage political debate, and demand government action. The movement has intentionally relied on the concept of femicide to link violence against women to the patriarchal and “machismo” attitudes in Argentine society and to challenge victim-blaming narratives that frame killings of women as “crimes of passion.” Activists have also put forward concrete demands, moving beyond narrow carceral responses that simply impose harsher sentences on convicted offenders. To target the social enablers of violence, they have called for the collection and publication of detailed official statistics, the funding of shelters and services for women, comprehensive sex education in schools, and mandatory training for government actors, among other demands.
Their efforts have secured important victories. For instance, the Argentine government drafted a national action plan and started collecting and publishing data on femicides through a national registry. In 2018, the parliament passed Ley Micaela, which requires mandatory training on gender and violence against women for all government workers. The law is named after Micaela García, a #NiUnaMenos member who was raped and killed in 2017. Responding to activists’ calls for greater gender sensitivity in coverage, many Argentine media outlets have also changed the way they report on femicides and gender issues more broadly. In recent years, #NiUnaMenos has expanded its focus to abortion rights, securing a historic liberalization of abortion laws in 2020. Beyond Argentina, the movement has energized feminist activists across Latin America who have adopted similar protest narratives and organizing tactics. Today, nearly twenty Latin American countries have passed laws on femicide.
On the African continent, South Africa has been at the forefront of activism around femicides and gender-based violence in recent years, leading to some tentative political reforms. In 2018, an uptick in reported femicides prompted large-scale protests around the country. Using #TheTotalShutdown banner, activists formed a steering committee to articulate a core set of demands, studying and learning from the successes of previous South African protest movements. They scored several initial wins: President Cyril Ramaphosa met with the protesters and agreed to host a presidential summit on ending gender-based violence and femicide. In 2020, the government launched a comprehensive plan to address the crisis, and several legislative amendments passed in 2022 further strengthened state efforts to address gender-based violence.
The Argentine and South African cases show that widespread protests against femicides can successfully mobilize public attention and prompt government responses. Indeed, scholars have found that strong, autonomous feminist movements around the world have been essential drivers of government action to redress violence against women. At the same time, however, activists in both countries underscore that their struggle is far from over. Throughout Latin America, femicide rates remain high. Argentina reported 322 cases in 2023, a 33 percent increase from 2022. Yet the country’s new president, Javier Milei, has denied the existence of gender-based violence, closed down the ministry of women and gender, and seeks to narrow the scope of Ley Micaela. His rhetoric is directly at odds with the structural gender equality reforms advocates say are needed to make current legal frameworks meaningful in practice. In South Africa, meanwhile, the femicide rate is still five times higher than the global average. Despite the government’s empathetic statements, state responses remain severely underfunded, and coordination among government agencies is lacking.
The Road Ahead for Kenyan Activists
These comparative examples underscore the power of protest in challenging public indifference to gender-based violence. But they also highlight the difficult road ahead for Kenyan protesters and advocates. Sustained protesting and organizing are likely to be essential.
Since late January, Kenyan demonstrators have put forward a range of political demands. Although the Kenyan Constitution safeguards citizens’ right to be protected from violence and affirms the state’s duty to protect women’s needs, advocates emphasize that there is a vast schism between these legal obligations and current state practices. In response, they are calling for femicide to be legally recognized as a crime distinct from murder and for the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics to collect accurate data on the phenomenon, echoing the proposal made by the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls to institute national, regional, and international “femicide watches.” Protesters have also asked for cases of femicide to be expedited in the courts, noting that endless court delays discourage victims and play into the hands of offenders. Beyond the criminal justice system, they are calling for education on gender-based violence and gender stereotypes, comprehensive training of health and law officers, survivor-centric reporting by media outlets, and greater representation of women and feminist advocates in government. Like their Argentine and South African counterparts, Kenya feminists recognize femicides as a structural problem, one that cannot be addressed by the criminal justice system alone.
So far, the government response has been muted. Kenyan President William Ruto has yet to break his silence on femicide. Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura has made no official statement on the issue, but, according to the Nation newspaper, he told a journalist that women should “stop the love of money and being gullible.” To date, the only concrete responses have come from the Ministry of Interior and National Administration and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI). The former has rolled out new regulations requiring short-term rental properties to register with the Tourism Regulatory Authority, as two recent femicides occurred in unregistered short-let apartments. Meanwhile, Kenyan newspapers report that DCI is forming a specialized team that will expedite investigations into sexual offenses and murder incidents involving women and develop preventive strategies, though no further details on the scope of this effort have been made public.
At the 2021 Generation Equality Forum, Ruto’s predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, made a wide range of pledges focused on ending gender-based violence in the country. Since then, the government has taken some positive steps, such as establishing courts specialized in sexual and gender-based violence. The current wave of public outrage represents an important test of the government’s broader commitments. Over the past few weeks, the protests have ignited a critical public discussion about the causes of femicide in Kenyan society. But they have also uncovered significant resistance, with some voices denying that women face gendered threats or shifting blame onto women’s behavior. Political leaders should take this opportunity to listen to women’s experiences, challenge misogynistic and victim-blaming statements, and publicly acknowledge and respond to the protesters’ demands. Comparative cases show that combating femicide requires sustained resource and policy commitments that address not only gaps in law enforcement but also deeper societal drivers. High-level recognition is a critical first step.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that President William Ruto made pledges in 2021 on ending gender-based violence in Kenya. Instead, his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, made those pledges. This error was corrected on February 13, 2024.