Unsettling reality: State of gender desks in police stations

We find Jane* sitting on a bench next to Room 8 in the far corner of the ground floor of Kiambu County Police headquarters.

Next to her is a young man busy on his mobile phone. He is undisturbed with the whimpering of Jane, who, from her appearance, is in a bad state. She is dressed in an old flowered dress, her hair is untidy and her feet are covered with torn black rubber shoes.

The date is October 26, 2023, and the time 1.20pm. We are here on a fact-finding mission. We want to find out if the station has a gender desk and whether it is serving its purpose optimally.

Gender desks were rolled out in 2004 to receive and investigate cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). They were meant to eliminate fear and shame that comes with the abuse. And in the long term, encourage society to report such cases either as a victim or as a witness.

We sit next to Jane, who appears to be in her 30s. About five minutes later, we engage her to find out what is troubling her. Room 8 is for gender and children’s affairs, basically the gender desk as should be officially known going by the naming of the units by the National Police Service (NPS).
She has come to report her husband, who has been violating her sexually.

“My husband rapes me. I’m about two months pregnant and I feel so much pain when we are being intimate. He can’t accept my ‘no’ to the intimacy. He says I pretend and assaults me,” she opens up.

“I came here to report him to the police so that he can be warned. I don’t want him to be arrested. I only want him to be warned, but I can’t share my ordeal with four women. I’m waiting for one to walk out of the room and gesture to her to come and listen to my case.”

We ask her if she has the patience to wait as others like us came and went before her. “I’ll just wait,” she says and goes quiet.

We walk into the room. It has four women. Three are sitting around a large table having their lunch of rice and beef.

The fourth one is writing something on a book from a small table on the left-hand side of the room. We sit on a chair before her and in less than two minutes, she walks out, leaving us with the three women.

They are all friendly. They pause for a while and look at us, waiting for us to say something. For a moment, we are wordless, yet we have not come to report an abuse against me. To think about Jane, she is indeed in a tight spot. We leave her there.

Privacy

The three women decline to share any information about the unit, saying they had not been notified of our presence.

Lack of privacy is not just an issue of the gender desk at the Kiambu County Police headquarters.

For a GBV victim, reporting is the first step to accessing justice. However, lack of privacy creates fear, which puts them off. Unfortunately, this barrier manifests in gender desks across the country.

“There is no confidentiality at the gender desks. You sit on benches in the open space and the person sitting next to you can hear you narrate your experience. That’s really tormenting,” said Mary Makokha, the founder of Busia-based Rural Education and Economic Enhancement Programme organisation.

She spoke during a two-day conference, last September, evaluating the progress made in implementing the 12 anti-gender-based violence commitments by former President Uhuru Kenyatta in June 2021.

“We don’t want mere gender desks. We want quality gender desks, where someone feels safe to report her case,” she added.

With the Kiambu experience, Nation.Africa embarks on a spot check on the status of gender desks at police stations across the country.

Our first stop is Kabete Police Station in Nairobi. It is not any better. There is no signpost to direct one to the gender desk. Neither is it visible such that one can make their way there without asking for direction.

Here, the desk is known as the gender unit and is located at the edge of the compound, behind the main building of the police station.

We arrive at noon and find three (two men and one woman) officers on duty. It's a small room fitted with a worn-out cushioned back chair. One metre away, two chairs sandwich a small table. The woman police officer is sitting on the chair on the left side of the table facing the door.

On the other side of the table is an empty chair. The male police officers sit next to the window.

We sit on the empty chair and engage the woman officer. She says the unit has been operational since 2016, and the officers are on call 24/7. Until 2019, they would receive two cases daily, involving defilement and rape, mainly from Kangemi, Uthiru and Waithaka areas, she says.

The cases, however, declined to an average of two a month, after the NPS established a police station in Kangemi, she adds.

At Muthangari Police Station, we can’t immediately tell the presence of a gender desk as none of the rooms is labelled as such. We seek guidance from the police officer at the gate. He walks to the back of the canteen and points to a round mabati structure. It has no signpost. On the door, however, is a sticker pronouncing the fight to end SGBV.

We walk into the room and a friendly woman police officer welcomes me. She asks us to sit on a bench before a large table on the right-hand side of the room. Meanwhile, she is taking a statement from a young woman – probably in her 20s – sitting across the small table, on the left-hand side of the room.

Muthangari is located in the high-end area of Lavington, Nairobi County. Asked whether they receive cases from the wealthy in the neighbourhood, the officer says two out of 10 cases they receive monthly come from women from wealthy families who are beaten by their husbands.

However, the cases don’t go beyond reporting as the victims either withdraw the reports, or just disappear never to reappear.

Responding to our question on the lack of proper infrastructure to offer SGBV victims the privacy they deserve, the NPS spokesperson, Dr Resila Onyango, tells Nation.Africa that they are making efforts to improve the status and infrastructures of police stations.

“Coupled with proper continuous training and sensitisation of station commanders, we envision standardised police stations where members of the public are able to access services in a timely and professional manner,” she says.

She explains that the logic behind the gender desks is to encourage reporting of SGBV to police “through more gender-sensitive and confidential reporting, and case management system for victims”.

Admittedly, she says some police stations have child protection units meant to offer the “much-needed privacy and confidentiality required when handling children who are either victims or are in conflict with the law.”

Dr Onyango, however, notes that NPS has launched an anonymous Fichua kwa DCI (Directorate of Criminal Investigations) reporting system, which allows SGBV victims to report in confidence.

“We have also established a specialised unit known as Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit (AHTCPU) at the DCI. It is dedicated to the investigation of online crimes against children, including online child sexual exploitation and abuse,” she notes.

“Currently, we have two AHTCPUs, one in Nairobi and another in Mombasa, and this is one area where NPS is responding to SGBV cases.”

At the Kilimani Police Station, a newly constructed GBV and Children’s Rescue Centre remains closed. Dr Onyango says the unit was built courtesy of Vohra Raj Group of the Sarova Hotels and that the NPS was grateful to the donors.

“This is another good example of collaboration between NPS and members of the public to enhance NPS services,” she explains.

She says the unit was handed over to NPS the previous week, and a church was at the time equipping it. “This probably explains why you found the door locked. By the time you visited, it had not been handed over to us,” says Dr Onyango.

She says once operational, well-trained officers specialised in SGBV investigations will be deployed in the unit.

“NPS is appealing to members of the public to cooperate with the police to ensure all SGBV cases are taken to court, and not subjected to alternative dispute resolution,” she urges.

In 2021, NPS launched Policare (Police cares) policy. Under Policare, the gender desks would be integrated into the system to offer a complete set of services.

Victims would not move from one facility to another to get help. Instead, all services would be under one building. They would find a police officer to investigate the report, a medical professional to treat them or offer therapy, and a lawyer to present them in court.

But during the conference held last September and attended by NPS representatives, it was indicated that the much-publicised Nairobi and Nanyuki Policare centres had yet to offer the expected services.

The Nanyuki Policare was launched last year. It was established with the support of British Army Training Unit Kenya and the United Kingdom’s Reinvent programme.

Recently, Laikipia East Deputy County Commissioner Patrick Muli urged locals to report SGBV cases at the centre. He said that by reporting, “perpetrators would be dealt with, victims protected and justice delivered.”

On whether the Policare centres were to replace the gender desks, Dr Onyango says they are not. “Policare is a new concept,” she says.

“It is meant to be a one-stop-shop where experts such as psychosocial supporters, medics, and criminal justice experts, that is, the Judiciary and the police, collaborate and work together to address SGBV cases in a dignified manner that reduces post-traumatic experience and re-victimisation of SGBV victims.”

The police cannot win the war on SGBV alone, Dr Onyango adds.

“The need, therefore, for all stakeholders, including criminal justice actors, members of the public and development partners, to join hands with NPS in addressing SGBV is paramount,” she says.

But not all police stations have gender desks. There are no official figures of gender desks in Kenya and neither does Dr Onyango provide the data.

However, an April 22 article by UN Women indicated that about 50 per cent of the police stations in Kenya have gender desks.

Similarly, data on the total number of police stations is elusive, but the NPS 2021 annual report indicated that 702 new police stations had been established in 2019.

Of the police stations we visited in Nairobi and Kiambu counties, none had a computer to record and encrypt the victim’s data, a crucial aspect in SGBV cases.

In Uasin Gishu, County Police Commander Benjamin Mwanthi says most new police stations have no gender desks. He says such stations are forced to seek services at sub-county police stations.

Kondoo Police Station along the Eldoret-Nakuru highway in Kesses Sub-County is one of those without a standalone gender desk. A structure that serves as a temporary gender desk is also the main crime office at the station.

“Since I came here more than three years ago, I have never seen what you are calling a gender desk. As you see, this is a crime office, which also serves as the gender desk. There is no privacy,” says a junior police officer who requests anonymity due to police protocol of addressing the media.

Lack of personnel

Another officer from Soy Sub-County says his station has been in existence for two years but they have no gender desk.

“Despite my station having a modern structure, we have yet to establish a gender desk because of lack of officers to manage it,” says the officer.

However, Mr Mwanthi says stakeholders are addressing the challenge to ensure the new police stations establish the desks.

In neighbouring Baringo County, Koibatek police boss Joseph Ongaya says they have set up special desks and trained officers to handle SGBV cases.

He tells Nation.Africa that out of the six stations under his jurisdiction, only three have gender desks—Ravine, Makutano and Timboroa police stations.

“Those three stations without gender desks were gazetted two years ago but became operational about two months ago. It was only about a month ago that a substantive OCS was posted to the stations and we are working to have gender desks,” Mr Ongaya says.

Homa Bay Police Station is, however, one of those ahead of the lot. At the station is an SGBV and child rescue centre, built by women rights organisations in 2020. It is equipped with computers, donated by a charitable organisation, which facilitate digital filing of cases.

Lydiah Omwayio, attached to the desk, says all records at the station are in digital format. She says that with the digital data, investigators can track progress seamlessly.

“It is easy to identify cases on the computer and make a follow-up. Keeping records of paper is a bit difficult and it consumes a lot of space,” she says.

The gender desk at the Bungoma Police Station is among the best manned, with an inspector of police being in charge. Inspector Scovia Lisa Ipalei says the desk has been of much help to SGBV survivors in their quest for justice.

She admits that SGBV cases, including teenage pregnancy, are on the rise in the area and many victims are traumatised when they come to report.

“As a trained police officer at the gender desk, I have to cultivate close relationships with the survivors and offer post-trauma counselling where applicable. I have to also see them go through the healing process,” she says.

The officer lists defilement as the most rampant form of sexual violence against girls and women, followed by rape. She wants more police officers to be trained to handle such cases. She is worried that cases of defilement and teenage pregnancy could go up during school holidays.

The Bungoma desk has two beds to host survivors overnight if they cannot go back home for security reasons. It has a computer for recording cases.  During this visit, another woman officer was manning the desk.

County Police Commander Francis Kooli emphasises the need to have a police rescue centre to shelter more survivors and shield them from intimidation so that justice is served.

In Turkana County, SGBV cases at Kakuma Refugee Camp and adjacent areas in Kakuma town have declined drastically, thanks to a gender desk at Kakuma Police Station.

Police officers manning the desks have been trained in how to handle such cases, assist and sensitise the community to GBV.

Turkana West Sub-County Police Commander Richard Morara, through the UN Women's Leadership, Empowerment, Access and Protection in Crisis Response project, supported by the government of Japan, established the desk.

“This is after we established that some of our police officers were perpetrating such crimes. One officer is serving a 15-year jail term after he was found guilty of raping a refugee last year,” says Mr Morara.

Everlyne*, a Congolese refugee at Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement in Kakuma survived an attempted rape incident and reported the matter.

“I was preparing to leave the house for my casual job at a hotel in the refugee camp, when two men broke into my house… One attempted to rape me, but I screamed and a neighbour came to my rescue,” she says.

Because she had heard about a gender desk at the police station through community radio stations, she reported the incident.

“Through a trauma-informed and survivor-centred approach, a female police officer listened to my case, counselled and linked me to a safe space,” she adds.

Human rights activist Joseph Egelan says most cases reported at the gender desk are women-related but men, too, are victims.

“Police officers and stakeholders should create awareness within the community of the need for male victims to report the cases,” Mr Egelan says.
Nevertheless, police stations, considered places of refuge, are not entirely safe for SGBV victims.

On Saturday last week, a police constable at Rangwe Police Station in Homa Bay County is said to have defiled a 17-year-old girl placed under their protection. The girl was a victim of incest involving her father and was set to testify against him in court.

Again, in May, an officer at Khwisero Police Station in Kakamega County defiled a 16-year-old who was in the holding cell after being rescued from her boyfriend.

The girl’s father had reportedly asked the police to lock her up as a punishment for sneaking out of the house. At night, the officer moved the girl from the holding cell to the next and defiled her, a classic case of safe havens turned into hell chambers.

*Names changed to protect victims’ identity.

By Sammy Lutta, Steve Njuguna, Stanley Kimuge, Kamau Maichuhie, Titus Ominde, Moraa Obiria and George Odiwuor