Femicide: Who is killing our women?
In 77% of cases, killings were committed by a person known by the victim.
2d agoRosa MumanyiInfographics
More women were killed 2024 making it the deadliest in terms of femicide since 2018.
Analysis shows that 170 women died at the hands of current or former intimate partners during the year.
The data crunched by Odipo Dev and Africa Uncensored, whose report was launched in Nairobi on Monday, shows that 2024 had the blood of women spilt with husbands’ involvement accounting for close to 50 per cent of perpetrators.
The report seen by the Star shows it is based on an analysis of over 930 female murders in Kenya since 2016, draws from court records and media reports to provide fresh insights into patterns of violence against women.
The report titled ‘The Silencing of Women Project’, examines case judgments issued between 2016 and 2024, offering a detailed perspective on how these murders occur and the progress of justice in addressing them.
The analysis comes as President William Ruto has appointed a task force headed by former deputy chief justice Nancy Barasa to tackle femicide and recommend strategies to be better used.
Of the 930 women-killing incidents recorded from 2016 that the two entities studied, 628 of them meet UNODC’s definition of femicide, it says.
The police said that a woman was being killed daily in 2024, a trend that seems to have sustained into this year.
Summarised findings of the study are that with 2024 recording the highest number of women deaths at the hands of the committed lovers, the inference being that domestic violence is still rife in the country, and that the basic family fabric was teetering on collapse.
The 170 recorded cases in 2024 alone doubles the annual average recorded from 2016 to 2023, it says.
Aside from 2024, 2018 also recorded high number of women murders, with figures showing that they were over 150.
There’s been an increase in the number of cases that involve sexual assault prior to murder, with the report showing the increase is by seven per cent.
The same goes for hacking, with a six per cent increase in prevalence. Perpetrators are also increasingly using bladed weapons, often easy to access home cutlery, rather than methods like strangulation.
Moreover, it says, the leading killers of women remain largely unchanged over the years: intimate partners that includes husbands or boyfriends at 70 per cent as per 2024 convictions data.”
The report also decries the snail-paced criminal
justice system, saying, “justice remains slow, with an
average case duration of four years from court filing to
verdict in 2024—up from the 3.6-year average between
2016 and 2023.”
