Family conflict develops when members have different principles or perspectives, when people misunderstand one another, when someone’s feelings get hurt and develop resentment, and when miscommunication leads to mistaken assumptions and subsequent arguments.

Family stages often cause conflicts. These include learning to live as a new couple, having the first baby and any subsequent children, sending a child to school, dealing with adolescence and experiencing the passage of young persons into adulthood. Each of these stages has innumerable possibilities for conflicts.

Separation and divorce also creates conflict, as do moving to a new town, starting a new job or starting to commute long hours to and from work. Changes in financial circumstances also can lead to rusty relationships.

Children are vulnerable and suffer most when families are going through wars. This happens when parents engage in heated and hostile arguments involving verbal insults and raised voices which in the end develop to domestic violence.

Towards the end of last year, a man in Thika town stabbed his two children to death and tried to commit suicide.

James Kioho stabbed to death his son and daughter aged seven and two, respectively, in the chest before he attempted to poison himself.

According to neighbours in the area, the bizarre actions were triggered by a quarrel with his wife.


In February, a 26-year-old man was charged with murder in Phenix City, Alabama in connection with the death of his one-year-old daughter.

Police found the girl, Cateya Brooks, dead at the scene due to what was later determined by the authorities to be blunt force trauma. The father, Sha’Quel Brooks, was held in the Russell County Jail.

Cateya’s mother is described as 24-year-old Adriana Omondi, originally from Kenya.

Adriana was reportedly in Kenya and had left Cateya and her twin sister Zeraya under the care of their father.

In August this year a 48-year-old man from Gaichanjiru village in Murang’a County was apprehended for allegedly killing one of his nine-month-old twin babies following a disagreement with his wife over food.

Kandara DCIO Peter Mugwika stated the man went home drunk and demanded food. His breastfeeding wife told him that there was no food and the angry man grabbed one of the infants and flung him against the wall.

Police said the man would be charged with murder once investigations were over.

In October, a man hit and killed his 14-year-old son after he refused to go to school.

The man who was arrested in Kericho County allegedly picked a stick and hit his son fatally on the head, a Standard Six pupil at Chesanga Primary School.

According to a source at the Kapkatet Sub-county hospital who sought anonymity, Gilbert Too died at the hospital while the doctors were trying to resuscitate him.

Bureti Officer Commanding Police Division (OCPD) Mohammed Ali confirmed they arrested the suspect at Kapkatet trading centre.


Chapter Five (5) of the Constitution of Kenyan contains the Bill of Rights, which offers protection for the safeguards of the individual rights and freedoms for every Kenyan.

These include the right to association, movement, secure protection of the law, religion and conscience, and the right to life.

The Constitution, however, does not have the rights of children expressly spelt out or guaranteed.

The Penal Code defines the Penal system in Kenya. It outlines criminal offences and prescribes penalties to them.

The Penal Code protects children, in that acts and omissions, which amount to child abuse, are classified as punishable offences.

These include:

Sexual abuse: Offences outlined in the Penal Code- Rape, Defilement, indecent assault, incest (both by males and females) and unnatural offences.

Physical Abuse: Offences include: Common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm.

Other offences that protect the lives of children include concealment of birth, killing of the unborn and procuration of an abortion.