Beyond murder: Growing calls to recognise femicide as a distinct crime in Kenya
Anna Mutavati, the UN Women’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, during an interview in Nairobi on September 3, 2024.
What you need to know:
- The 2022 killing of journalism student Purity Wangeci by her boyfriend reignited calls for Kenya to recognise femicide as a distinct crime, not just murder.
- UN Women and Fida Kenya argue that classifying femicide separately would expose its gendered nature, strengthen prevention, and deter rising gender-based killings.
On May 13, 2022, Purity Wangeci Karinga was killed just three months’ shy of her 20th birthday on Buriria Estate in Kiambu East.
The main suspect? Her 24-year-old boyfriend, John Wanyoike Kibugi, alias VDJ Flex. As the Nation reported then, the journalism student at the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication had fallen out with her boyfriend of six months. He lured her to Kiambu under the pretext of resolving their relationship problems, only for her to be stabbed, strangled, and her body dumped by the roadside.
Detectives at Kiambu Police Station said Purity had earlier confronted John by phone after discovering he was involved in criminal activity. John was later arrested alongside three others and jointly charged at the High Court in Kiambu with “the offence of murder contrary to Section 203 as read with Section 204 of the Penal Code”.
Section 203 states: “Any person who, of malice aforethought, causes the death of another person by an unlawful act or omission is guilty of murder.” Section 204 prescribes the punishment: “Any person convicted of murder shall be sentenced to death.”
Although Purity’s murder has been prosecuted, the fact that the perpetrator was her intimate partner underscores a crucial difference. Countries such as Croatia have already recognised this. In its amended Criminal Code, Croatia defines the killing of a woman as aggravated murder, punishable by a minimum of 10 years in prison, or long-term incarceration. This explicit identification of femicide is exactly what gender equality advocates want for Kenya.
Anna Mutavati, UN Women’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, argued that recording the killing of women merely as “murder” masks the true scale of femicide. Citing joint data by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women, she underscored the urgency of the crisis. “In 2021 alone, Kenya recorded 706 femicide cases. And again, I remind us, these are not just numbers,” she said.
She was speaking on September 11, during a UN Women hybrid forum on preventing and responding to gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide in Kenya, which focused on leveraging the sharing of intra-Africa, South-South, and North-South experience.
“Remember, when we start counting 1, 2, 3, 4, and we reach 100, and continue up to 700, these are women and girls losing their lives every day at the hands of loved ones or family members,” she emphasised.
When killings are hidden under general laws, the crisis is concealed, she warned. “Just as intimate partner violence was once lumped together with common assault, femicide must now be separated to spotlight the relationships under which these women are being killed or abused.”
With real-time monitoring, forensic data collection, and disaggregated documentation, she argued, Kenya could develop evidence-based policies and interventions against femicide.
Evidence-based policies
Dennis Otieno, senior legal counsel at the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida Kenya), concurred. While femicide has always been prosecuted under the broader category of murder, he said, its gendered nature and alarming frequency are being overlooked.
“In strict legal terms, femicide is murder,” he said. “But when it is lumped into the general cluster of murder, it is often dismissed as just another crime of passion. The reality is that the intensity and frequency of these killings raise serious concerns that demand urgent legal redress.”
He stressed that treating femicide as ordinary murder fails to capture its gendered dimension. “Giving it a gender-based perspective ensures stronger intervention, better prevention mechanisms, and greater awareness. This is about preserving life from a gendered perspective because data shows that women and girls are disproportionately targeted.”
Classifying femicide as a distinct crime would also serve as a deterrent, he said. “The statistics show how frequent and gruesome these crimes have become,” Mr Otieno said. “Women’s bodies have been found dismembered, disfigured, or thrown off balconies. At first, these cases were dismissed as isolated incidents. But as the trend became clear, it is no longer possible to ignore the blatant disregard for women’s lives.”
Having a femicide-specific law in Kenya would build on the reforms the country has made in the fight against GBV. Mr Otieno explained that until 2006, all GBV offences were prosecuted under the Penal Code, grouped together with general assault and bodily harm. However, he said the rise in cases of rape, defilement, and other forms of sexual violence led to the enactment of the Sexual Offences Act in 2006, which recognised the unique nature of such crimes.
“The same logic applies here,” Mr Otieno said. “Society has evolved, and the law must evolve with it. Just as the Sexual Offences Act was created to address the growing concern of sexual violence, a standalone law on femicide is now necessary to respond to the disturbing rise in gender-based killings.”
