Homophobia in Kenya? Report exposes violence and deep-rooted bias
An intersex teenager and friends use phones. A report suggests judicial complicity in denying violence against sexual and gender minorities.
What you need to know:
- A groundbreaking report reveals how stigma, silence and systemic bias continue to endanger sexual and gender minorities.
- Discrimination and violence persist, raising urgent questions about justice, media and societal responsibility, despite constitutional guarantees.
Is Kenya homophobic? This question is answered by Lives on the line: Violence and discrimination against sexual and gender minorities in Kenya, authored in September 2025 by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and its partners.
Covering October 2023 to September 2024, the report is described as “the first comprehensive documentation of human rights violations against sexual and gender minorities (SGMs)”. It was triggered by the 2019 High Court ruling in Petition 16 of 2019, which upheld sections 162 and 165 of the Penal Code, which criminalise same-sex conduct. This was in a case filed by KHRC seeking to declare these sections as unconstitutional and a violation of the “rights to equality, human dignity, privacy and health”. The report points out that its appeal against the judgment remained unresolved by September 2025.
In other words, this report suggests judicial complicity in denying violence against SGMs. In the view of the KHRC report, homophobia was evident in the “fierce backlash…hate speech, disinformation and threats” following the Supreme Court decision.
According to the report, “harassment, physical assault and emotional violence remain the most common forms of abuse” against SGMs, fuelled by “systemic barriers, including entrenched stigma (and) biased media narratives”. Harassment, the leading violation, was reported by 682 respondents and typified by sexual and verbal abuse, resulting in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and suicidal ideation.
Physical and sexual violence were reported to have caused various reproductive problems. Nairobi, Thika and Machakos counties, alongside the coastal region, were leading in the cases reported. But the coastal region “emerged as a hotspot for multiple forms of abuse” consisting of harassment (438), emotional violence (147) and intimate partner violence (80).
Perpetrators were largely people in the immediate vicinity of the affected individuals. They consisted of intimate partners (62), sex work clients (40), family members (37), service providers (34), neighbours (29) and friends (27). Majority (68 per cent) of the survivors knew the perpetrators. This pattern echoes the general trend on gender-based violence that spaces assumed to be the safest are the most dangerous. This puts the SGMs in a quandary of keeping their identities unknown, at the expense of not receiving services, or exposing themselves, at the risk of violence.
The report then asks: “Why does society continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of sexual and gender minorities?” It accuses the traditional watchdog, the media, of tendentious parochialism around “religious condemnation, accusations of foreign influence and community-driven violence”. It specifically claims that “over 300 human rights violations [were] linked to media-fuelled discrimination.”
Referring to a separate report titled Who Shapes the Narrative? the study notes that the media gave minimal attention to SGM issues because of “prevailing social taboos”. This implicit and complicit bias is highlighted in the statement that “coverage (only) spikes whenever high-profile court rulings, legislative proposals or controversial statements by public figures draw attention to the topic”. For instance, the January 2023 murder of Edwin Chiloba and the public discussion surrounding it is noted to have revolved around his sexual orientation rather than right to life and dignity.
Casting Kenya as dangerously normative, with the highest office in the land itself declaring a hostile stand against this community, the study observes that the widespread violation of the rights of SGMs contradicts constitutional promises of equality and dignity. This pioneering work raises the lid on an issue often treated with acrimonious conservatism rather than calm dialogue. Its major shortcoming is the lack of operational definitions of terms such as “non-binary”, “intersex”, and “sexual and gender minorities”.
The report makes recommendations to different actors starting with the President, to governmental and nongovernmental institutions, Parliament, mass media, academia, sectarian entities, private sector, law enforcement agencies, community level agents, the Judiciary and regional and international organisations.
The media is specifically asked to enforce editorial accuracy, respect and balance when covering SGM issues; conduct training in ethical reporting to reduce bias and harmful stereotypes; co-create its guidelines on inclusive reporting; integrate SGM reporting ethics into the national journalism code; institute fact-checking to counter misinformation and disinformation about SGMs; and amplify positive narratives about this community.
Like all other entities, media houses are guided by the moral and religious philosophies, business interests and audience sensitivity of their owners and gatekeepers. Will these automatically bias them from paying attention to the recommendations made?
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya ([email protected]).
