On January 20th 2025, 29-year-old John Kiama Wambua walked through Nairobi with a mutilated body in his backpack. Shortly after his arrest, he confessed the identity of the victim: his wife. They had been married 3 years. When they arrived at his home, the police officers described a “horrific” scene: they found a knife, blood-soaked clothes, and other human remains.
This gruesome story illustrates a grim reality in Kenya, where 41% of women that are in the age of having children have experienced domestic violence. In Kenya, the rate of femicide, defined as "the intentional murder of women or girls because they are female” by the World Health Organization, has been increasing in recent years.
In the first 22 days of 2025 alone, at least 15 women were murdered in the country, according to the Kenyan media outlet The Daily Nation. In 2024, 170 women were killed—a significant rise from 95 the previous year. These figures are likely far below the actual number.
A World Health Organization report estimates that approximately 47 women are killed each week in the country. They are usually murdered by someone close to them: a partner, family member, or friend.
A wake-up call
In the past, these killings often flew “under the radar” and remained invisible. But thanks to the work of the Civil Society, 2024 marked a turning point in national awareness. Marches gathering thousands—mostly women—were held in several cities across the country. Protesters carried signs that read:
«Stop Killing Us»
and
«Being a Woman Should Not Be a Death Sentence.»
If these actions brought attention to gender-based violence, they did not prevent femicides. Last July, a mass grave containing the dismembered bodies of women was uncovered in a landfill near the capital. A couple months later, in September, Ugandan marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei was burned alive by her partner in Eldoret, in the northeast of Lake Victoria.
According to the head of Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations, 97 women were murdered between August and October of last year. However, he claimed that the victims’ gender was not a decisive factor. “In the majority of the cases we investigated, the motive was purely criminal. There was no intent to specifically target women,” he stated in October.
Kenyan President William Ruto recently addressed the repeated killings: “As parents, starting with myself, and as Kenyans, we should reflect on this moral crisis... We should begin by asking ourselves: what must I do as a citizen?”
« Our politicians are negligent »
Some feminists criticize this framing of the problem. They argue that it allows politicians to shift responsibility and blame women instead.
By talking about morality, they act as if the women were immoral, as if all those who were killed were prostitutes,»
faid activist Claudia Enane. For Mishi Chiveli from the organization Equality Vanguard, women are still seen “as second-class citizens” in Kenya. “In this country, when you grow up as a girl, your humanity is denied,” she says.
Marion Njoroge of the NGO MK Defenders, a member of the feminist coalition End Femicide, believes Kenyan politicians “are negligent and do not take the issue seriously.” She points to the failures of the judicial system: “The criminal justice system is too weak. Many cases face major delays.”
Despite the judicial system being plagued by delays, the Kenyan authorities have launched several initiatives to combat this scourge. In January 2025, the 102 female Members of Parliament announced the launch of the Komesha Dhuluma (“Stop Violence”) campaign. The initiative aims to address the root causes of the problem through community outreach and closer collaboration with women’s rights organizations, the justice system, and law enforcement.
Tiring legal battles
In 2021, the national police opened a center for reporting gender-based and sexual violence. A year later, the government established a court to handle such cases. Yet, according to Kenyan data firm OdipoDev, it still takes over five years on average for a femicide suspect to be convicted in Kenya.
Rosa Nduta has been fighting that battle for justice since 2022, after the death of her daughter. In mid-March of that year, 19-year-old Purity Wangechi, was found dead by a roadside in Kiambu, a suburb north of Nairobi. Her body bore knife wounds and signs of strangulation. The prime suspect, her boyfriend, had reportedly met with her that evening to resolve a dispute they had earlier that day.
“The process is very slow and very exhausting,” says Rosa Nduta. In two years, she has only attended two court sessions. “It drains me emotionally. Every time, I have to face my daughter’s killers, which makes grieving even harder,” she says. The next hearing is scheduled for June 9, 2025. But it is just one step in a long legal journey. The case is still in the preliminary indictment phase, with many more hearings to go before the trial finally begins.
According to the UN Women, in 2023 :
- 83% of women’s murders are femicides (i.e. because of their gender).
- a woman is killed every 10 minutes in the world by an intimate partner or a family member.
- 60% of women’s killings are committed by an intimate partner or a family member (51.000 of the 85.000 women and girls killed, in 2023 in the world, died at the hand of an intimate partner or a member of their family).
- Since COVID-19, the number of countries publishing informations on women’s murders by close friends or family members has went down 50%.
- Femicides display bigger sexist and sexual violences : between 22 and 37% of victims of femicides had reported some psychological, sexual or physical abuse by their partners.
- Africa has the highest femicide rate by intimate partners in 2023 with 21.700 victims (2,9 for 100.000)
América : 8.300 victims (1.6 for 100.000) Océania : 300 victims (1.5 for 100.000) Asia : 18.500 victims (0.8 for 100.000) Europe : 2.300 victims (0.6 for 100.000)