By Jeckonia Otieno

As the clock ticks towards March next year when Kenyans  elect their fourth president and  other leaders, many women are sitting uneasily. Elections evoke dark memories.

In past elections, goons take advantage of the security lapses to commit violence especially against women.

Florence, a rape survivor, walks in fear. She keeps darting her eyes to check any lurking danger and she has lived this way for nearly five years now. In 2007, she had voted and went home to wait for results.

As she was watching TV, two men forcefully entered her house and raped her in turns.

She swears they were security officers.

When they were done with her, they walked away, leaving Florence in anguish and pregnant.

“I could not go to hospital because I had no money. I didn’t know where to turn to. I feared getting other rapists on the way to the police station, so I never reported the crime. Instead, I locked myself in my house and prayed that what I went through was just a bad dream. I was wrong,” Florence told The Standard.

It is such violence meted against women all over the world that led to the annual campaign to raise awareness on violence against women that 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence came to be 22 years ago.

For 16 days, from November 25, which is also the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, to December 10, there are global campaigns to raise awareness on gender violence — and urge all people to put an end to it.

Continues to rise

Sadly, statistics show that gender violence continues to rise. Women especially continue to be violated despite the campaigns.

This year’s campaign theme, From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence Against Women, is focusing on the main place and instruments that have been zeroed in as the causes of gender-based violence.

Without peace in the home, there cannot be peace in the world.

Psychologists say this is because a child exposed to violence will grow up thinking that violence is ‘normal’ thus the son will mete violence on women when he grows up and the daughter will accept violence as the order of the day.

Persistent cycle

With this kind of exposure then, the cycle of violence will persist. And with such people who find violence acceptable, the proliferation of small arms in the world, take the vice to deadly levels; literally.

There have been many cases from around the country in the media about gender-based violence. This year, there have been traumatising cases of fathers slaughtering their children after fights with their wives.

Also, security agents — they have access to firearms, have been reported shooting dead their wives and children before turning the guns on themselves.

According to Saida Ali, the executive director of Coalition on Violence against Women, many cases of gender-based violence go unreported because it is associated with stigma (‘if you were beaten, you must have done something wrong’, the women are told). There are a few cases of men violated by women and when this happens, the men are too shy to report.

Ali say during the post-election violence of 2007/08 thousands of women and girls were raped but many did not have the courage to report because of shame.

Speaking during the launch of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence yesterday, Ali said, “Despite the shame and stigma associated with rape, more than 3,000 rape cases were reported during the period. Unfortunately, many of these have never been resolved.”

This situation questions security agents’ commitment to helping survivors get justice.

Ali argues that it has been difficult to bring perpetrators to book due to the lacklustre approach by security forces towards the cases.

In some instances, the security agents themselves have been accused of abetting gender-based violence.

With the General Elections just months away, Kenyans hope that this year’s campaign against gender-based violence will not just be an annual event, but some serious steps will be taken towards ending the violence.

If justice is served to every perpetrator of gender-based violence, then the campaign will not be in vain.