Why the Cabinet must fast track Baraza team's proposals on GBV

After months of impatient waiting, the Gender-Based Violence Technical Working Group report found its way to the Presidency. What have they recommended and how do we ensure the recommendations will be implemented?

Last November, this column reminded both offices of the Deputy President and President that the Working Group’s 194-page report had been lying unattended in their inboxes for four months. It also cheekily called for a Good Samaritan or activist to transport the report 16km from Karen to Kilimani to hasten its adoption. It worked. The report was delivered within days.

Last week, three months later, the President gave the Gender Cabinet Secretary 30 days to present a paper before Cabinet. Even if readers of this column will be familiar with the trends, there is much in the report that the public can draw clarity from. Some 34 per cent of women and 27 per cent of men have experienced physical violence. Roughly, a third have endured sexual violence. Death by femicide has been up 10 times between 2022-2204. Violence is an everyday threat for many.

Women undressed in Kakamega market centres with sex for jobs, grades, food, or even soil in the gold mines of Migori. Wives killed after family members urged their silence following repeated beatings, children raped by relatives or parents and widows killed for less than an acre.

Gender based violence currently costs Kenya Sh46 billion annually in health expenses, legal processes and productivity losses. Based on these trends, the Working Group has demanded that the President declare Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Femicide as a national crisis within 30 days.

They call for femicide to be defined as a distinct legal crime to prevent impunity, improve data and target our justice agencies. The Working Group has urged the government to learn from a decade of feminist activism between 2014 #MyDressMyChoice and 2024 #StopFemicideKE.

Only sustained and disruptive public awareness campaigns will shift these widespread and normalised trends. Campaigns must focus not just the value of a violence-free society but also on the consequences of perpetrating violence against all genders, both online and in our communities.

While the State retains the primary duty of keeping all Kenyans dignified, safe and free, our homes and communities cannot continue to look the other way and suppress access to justice. The report demands that all out-of-court settlements that silence, coerce, or deny survivors their right to justice be legally punishable.

We need to tighten existing laws, hasten court case management and have stricter bail/bond rules. We need a digitised and centralised and transparent national GBV/femicide database. Only then will serial offenders be detected, police accountability improve and our policies be evidence-driven.

The recommendations are familiar for most committed anti-violence activists. They mirror the demands of the StopFemicideKE movement who marched twice in January and December 2024 to make these demands.

One recommendation has been more controversial: the amendment of the Sexual Offences Act (2006) to include chemical castration for both male and female child sex offenders. Chemical or surgical castration as punishment has no basis in international human rights law. In fact, free and informed consent is required, defeating this as a punitive sentence.

The proposal for the Kenyan state to mutilate a human being would undermine the right to bodily integrity and freedom from torture.

Apart from this recommendation, the report is well researched and argued. Nancy Baraza’s team can be congratulated.

The President’s 30-day deadline to the Gender Cabinet Secretary lapses on 25 February, eleven days after Valentine's Day. Twelve days after the 25th is International Women’s Day.

Given that survivors and victims’ families have waited seven months for the report to reach State House, could we ask the CS to place a call to Africa’s fastest man, Ferdinand Omanyala, for tips on how to secure Cabinet approval, accelerate budgetary resources and act on femicide now.

Should this moment be squandered, Madam CS, I place 10 million registered women voters on notice?