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Sexual Violence Escalating in Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya—Post-election rioting and chaos in Kenya increasingly involves rapes and sexual violence against women and children, according to United Nations officials here.
More than 250,000 people have crowded into 42 displaced-person camps around Kenya since protests and disturbances began in the wake of disputed elections December 27, and 85 percent of the displaced are women and children. But neither the streets nor the camps are safe.
“We were used to seeing an average of about four cases a day” of rapes and assaults on women and children, said Rahab Ngugi, patient services manager of Nairobi Women’s Hospital. “Now there is an average of between eight and ten.” Half the victims are girls under 18, he said—and those are just the ones who come in for treatment.
Most rapes are not reported in Kenya even during peacetime, said Florence Gachanja, Kenya programme officer for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Rape victims tend to be regarded as ruined and a disgrace to their families. “A lot of sensitization is needed so that people setting up camps can understand that safe areas need to be created for girls and women to sleep, and reporting mechanisms for sex attacks need to be put in place and publicized,” she said.
Women often must travel long distances from the camps without protection to gather wood and water, and gang rapes are increasingly common, she added. “We have heard of children as young as two and also women as old as 70 being raped,” she said.
The camps are dark and under-staffed, with little equipment and inadequate sanitary facilities. One camp officer said he had only six policemen to protect more than 5,000 people. UNFPA said it was providing the Kenya health system with medical equipment and supplies for the camps, including safe-delivery kits for pregnant women (a plastic sheet, soap, a razor to cut the umbilical cord, string to tie it off, and a blanket to wrap the newborn); medicine to treat rape victims and prevent sexually transmitted infections; and psychosocial and legal support for rape survivors.
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, issued an urgent appeal for $3 million for emergency protection for the displaced women and children and those at risk in their home communities. The violence has created “an environment that is tolerating very high levels of rape and sexual attack against women,” said Kathleen Cravero of the United Nations Development Programme’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. “Battles are fought on women’s bodies as much as on battlefields.”
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