Women RIGHTS are Human RIGHTS!

Three years ago, many of us fervently and angrily swamped personal and public spaces and unanimously condemned a then emerging trend of stripping of women in public for ‘indecent dressing’. We came out in our numbers, young and old, women and men, and shouted ourselves hoarse in Nairobi City streets to express solidarity with the victims of the retrogressive acts and ‘My Dress My Choice’ rallying call. Yours truly hauled a 7-months pregnancy in a mini and took part in the procession all the way. It felt great that at least all the women rights activism and advocacy of yesteryears was not in vain, had bore sweet fruits!

Fast forward to events over the past week and what an appalling contradiction!

It all started with the ‘shock’ sentencing of ‘Githurai three’ to death on account of guilty verdict on robbery with violence and sexual assault charges. The media was soon after awash with the skewed ‘harshest judgement ever’ pitch and innuendo which the public was only too eager to pick and peddle. Screaming headlines and breaking news set the stage, ‘Stripping woman earns three men death sentence’, ‘Three Sentenced To Death For Assaulting A Woman Inside A Githurai Bound Matatu’, ‘Three to hang for stripping, sexually assaulting Githurai woman’, ‘Three Githurai matatu operators to hang for undressing woman’, ‘Three Githurai Men Sentenced to Death over STRIPPING A Woman wearing mini Skirt Naked’, ‘Three men who undressed woman in Githurai to hang’. The sequel hit the message home ‘....It is the harshest judgement yet to be meted out on sex offenders’, ‘What began as a pat on a woman’s buttocks as she alighted from the vehicle has ended up as a capital offence’, ‘Mixed reaction to death penalty for three Githurai touts’, ‘Was the court too harsh on the Githurai three?’ ‘Your take on the death sentence passed on the Three Githurai matatu operators for undressing a woman?’ Then it was all ditto, with many ‘legal experts’ proclaiming how harsh, unfair, discriminatory, unjustified the sentence was.

My primary quarrel with the aforementioned media coverage slant was the seeming deliberate focus on telling half of the story and the question of minimizing violence against women and women rights violations rearing its ugly head in matters sexual offences.

The three accused were charged with robbery with violence and sexual assault and the prosecution successfully proved accordingly. Apparently, the accused beat the concerned woman, stripped her naked, sexually molested her by inserting their fingers in her private parts while pulling her breast, threatened to gang rape her and robbed her of a mobile phone, a handbag and Sh10,000. All because the woman protested against one of the accused touching her buttocks as she alighted from the vehicle. The presiding Chief Magistrate described the incident as ‘a cruel act of bestiality from uncultured men’.

The law prescribes a mandatory death sentence for robbery with violence and minimum of 10years for sexual assault. The three accused were subsequently sentenced to death for robbery with violence and 25 years suspended sentence for sexual assault. Question of whether the judgement was legally justified therefore should not arise. Rather the question should have been whether the robbery with violence charges was proved beyond reasonable doubt.

That the ensuing raging debate has chosen to conveniently revolve around the death sentence vis a viz the act of stripping beats logic and begs some questions – Why the double standards? Does robbery with violence become a lesser crime on the basis of sexual assault? Why single out sexual assault as a basis for different treatment?  What is for certain is that victims of sexual assault are largely female and the perpetrators are largely male. It is therefore not lost on some of us that the media coverage and subsequent debate is just but a manifestation of minimisation of violence against women and violation of women rights.  

We must choose not to split hairs about violence against women!

We must choose to take a firm stand for women rights as human rights! 

WE CAN End All Violence Against Women

As the world marked The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25^th November and ushered in the annual 16 days of activism against gender violence last year, I found myself reminiscing and reflecting over my various interactions towards a society free of violence against women…a society that upholds women rights….a society that cherishes gender equality and social justice… The We Can End ALL Violence against Women campaign and movement, popularly dubbed WE CAN is one particular interaction that has so far made an indelible mark. So much that it continues to shape my ideological and practical perspectives on matters violence against women, women rights, gender equality and generally social justice.

Beyond the seemingly very aspirational goal, WE CAN message was neither new nor any different from what I was accustomed to. The uniqueness lay in the ‘out of the box without necessarily leaving the box’ approach, the packaging, the delivery, the innovation…WE CAN was unorthodox, free of your usual rights activism/NGO jargon and way of doing things, yet refreshingly simple, practical, inclusive and engaging. WE CAN amazingly and ‘effortlessly’ took the message home with amazing results to boot! I still marvel at the impact more than five years after the campaign went ‘cold’ in Kenya.  

WE CAN was based on feminist analysis and human rights frameworks. It acknowledged patriarchy as the root cause of violence against women and rights based approach as only legitimate framework to address women rights and priorities. It espoused violence against women as violation of women’s basic rights and women as equally entitled to equal rights, dignity, respect, freedom and safety in society. However, Rather than the ‘usual’ reactive approach it took a proactive approach. It was devoid of the often divisive feminist language, argumentation and ethos of militant rights activism, reference to standardized theoretical ideologies underlying violence against women and hard-hitting anti-patriarchy rhetoric. Instead, it focused on two very basic, subtle yet clear and hard hitting messages, that, ‘women are no less valuable than men’ and ‘violence against women is unacceptable’.

WE CAN offered a new way of calling a spade a spade without calling it a spade. While it subscribed to the widely accepted and official UN definition of violence against women (“any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”) it chose to make reference to ‘violence against women’ instead of politically correct ‘gender based violence’ and to define the former as a unique subset of the latter that requires specific response. Rather than make reference to extreme and vile forms of violence it referred to the level of everyday violence and manifestations of inequity to simplify the complexities of violence against women and trigger recognition of the various aspects of the violence.

WE CAN recognized that many forms of violence against women are intertwined with cultural, ideological and/or religious identities. However, rather than engage in blame games and or ‘sterile theoretical debates’ which only ‘tend to invoke strongly protective instincts’, it focused on peoples lived experiences of violence to demonstrate that the violence affects everyone. Rather than depict women as powerless victims and name and shame men as perpetrators, women were presented as powerful masters of their destiny and men as capable of ending violence against women.  

WE CAN strategically focused on domestic violence. The underlying rationale was that most forms of violence against women happen within the home and/or intimate relationships, many forms of the violence are accepted, tolerated and justified by society and subsequently are ‘unseen’ and viewed as inevitable, normal and a reality of life. When homes ‘normalize’ violence it becomes ‘normal’ in families, communities and the society. Women will never be equal in their public lives until they are equal in their homes and families.

All in all, WE CAN was premised on individual and collective capacity and responsibility to prevent and end violence against women. The overarching message was clear…

If we really want to end violence against women WE CAN........

We must choose to raise our voices to oppose violence against women.

We must choose not to split hairs about violence against women

We must take notice of and speak out about all forms of violence against women

Our voices and actions together have POWER to prevent and end violence against women!

 WE CAN made it possible to imagine and believe that a world where relationships between women and men are based on mutual respect, non-violence and equality and women and men enjoy equal rights  is possible! WE CAN surely choose to package our messages and deliver them in a manner that gets them home! 

Consensual Defilement My Foot!

It was a sigh of relief when MPs thwarted the ill-informed, scandalous, attempt to ammend the Sexual Offences Act to reduce the age of consent from 18 to 16. That the contentious ammendment with very grave implications was ‘hidden’ in the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Ammendment) Bill 2016 and made it to the floor of the house amid loud contestations is an indictment on its proponents and movers and belies their real motivation.

Lest we forget, the Sexual Offences Act was a product of a long protracted struggle marked by many false starts, disappointments, half-hearted compromises, gains, losses…

Agitation for a specific sexual offences legal framework started in earnest in the 1990s, by women and child rights organizations. It was prompted by endemic sexual violence particularly against women and girls amid a weak inadequate legal framework and the need for reform in line with international standards. Public protests, petitions, public interest litigation and networking culminated to the initial Sexual Offences Bill which was drafted in 2004 by the Juvenile Justice Network, comprised of 16 women and child rights NGOs. The Bill sought to consolidate laws relating to sexual offences, to amend or repeal existing laws, to bridge legal loopholes and to provide new laws for ‘new’ sexual offences. The Bill was presented to the then AG, Amos Wako on 15^th September 2004 for tabling in Parliament as a government bill. It was never to be, despite the AG’s recognition and expression of need for the Bill and vigorous and unrelenting advocacy and lobbying efforts.   

The Juvenile Justice Network then teamed up with nominated MP, Hon. Njoki Ndung’u, who introduced the Sexual Offences Bill in Parliament in December 2004 as a private members motion. Despite misgivings from a section of male MPs about some envisaged provisions, the motion was passed in April 2005. A revised version of the Bill was published in August 2005, but it was time barred when Parliament was prorogued for the constitution referendum. The Bill was republished in January 2006 then withdrawn prior to debate in Parliament to allow for consensus and attendant revisions. The ammended Bill was published in March 2006. It went through a highly polarizing debate but was eventually passed with amendments in July 2006. The Sexual Offences Act came into force on 21^st July 2006. 

Unambiguous definition of consent age, subsequent criminalization of sexual activity below 18 years, gender neutrality and minimum sentences were some of the hallmark gains of the Sexual Offences Act. As an informed and active participant in this struggle, I was scandalized by the bid to roll back the gains in the fight for rights and safety of children, both girls and boys. Am still lost and yet to come to terms with what the push to lower the age of consent from 18 to 16 sought to cure and what is so urgent about 2 years that would justify making such a drastic change in a law that we fought so hard for. 

Some quarters chose to confuse with useless legal jargon, making reference to ‘age of consensual defilement’ to push the agenda for reduced consent age. Seriously!???Defilement means one person is too young to legally consent to sex, it can only be an antithesis of consensual sex. I care less that there are jurisdictions that have set the consent bar as low as 13years. Our lived reality is definitely worlds apart. Whatever the case may be, what capacity does a 16 year old have to appreciate and effectively manage the biological, physiological, social and economic consequences of their ‘choice’ to have sex? With the ammmendment as was, how would we have ensured protection of 16 year old girls from 45-year old sex predators, or from being trapped in early marriages following consensual abuse? It is outright irreconcilable that we can entrust 16 year old boys and girls with such potentially life-changing decisions yet we cannot entrust them with the responsibility and rational decisions that comes with a national ID, a Driving Licence or a voter’s card.

   

Some arguments rightfully cited existence of consensual sex among minors. It was said that ‘many younger children are engaging in sex’… that ‘it is wrong to prosecute teenage boys for having sex with their girlfriends’…that it is more of a moral than a legal issue…that it is foolhardy  to legislate morality. It was further claimed that ‘too many boys are in prison for sexual crimes’…..with the actual facts rarely featuring in the ‘legally informed and well thought out analyses’ beyond citing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ laws in other jurisdictions. While consensual sex by minors is a reality that we may have to live and deal with, it must never be allowed to be synonym or directly proportional to defilement or rape. Challenges with addressing morality issues and prosecuting sexual offences by teenagers must never be used as a justification to make such a drastic change in the law.  

The ammendment ostensibly sought to protect against unjustified victimization of teenage boys. Narratives were told of parents taking advantage of the Sexual Offences Act to have their young daughter’s boyfriends jailed for defilement or rape. While this is not far-fetched, once again the actual figures to demonstrating the scope and magnitude of the problem were missing in action. Given the probable circumstances, the need to protect the boy child and/or deal with conniving parents cannot be over emphasized. However, it must never be at the at the expense of the girl child!     

The Sexual Offences Act was relentlessly labelled punitive to young men and minors, with seeming calls for different treatment of sexual offences on account of age of perpetrator. How different is an 18 year old sexual offences offender from an 18 year old robbery with violence or murder offender? Is the latter treated any different because they are 18 and their victim is 17? Why should it be different for sexual offences? The pro-ammendment arguments ‘conveniently’ avoided highlighting that the Law as is provides for convicts that are minors to be sent to borstal institutions for a maximum of three years. The gender dimension, where victims and perpetrators of sexual offences are largely female and male respectively, was also largely ignored. The bottom line is that sexual offences are crimes like any other crimes in our statutes, an 18 year old is an adult and three years in a borstal institution is no comparison to the lifetime trauma that survivors of sexual offences often have to live with.  

Its good riddance to the attempts to make it legal for 16 year olds to engage in sex!  

Infidelity by another name is VIOLENCE!

Infidelity and all its appendices has become common fodder for many radio call-in shows, gossip columns, gutter press and juicy gossip among family, friends and acquaintances. Discussions often manifest tacit social acceptance and tolerance for men’s infidelity. Having ‘mpango wa kando, clande, gachungwa’ as we have popularly christened marital infidelity has seemingly become the in-thing. If it is not about glorification of extra marital relationships as men’s entitlement (infamous myth that ‘men are polygamous in nature’ and perception that fidelity is an impossible feat for men) it is about a plethora of excuses and justification for men’s infidelity. The real cruelty behind infidelity or the devastating consequences of infidelity rarely features...off course unless the man is on the receiving end.

 

While pondering over the social acceptance of infidelity, i was struck by the stark similarities with violence against women in intimate relationships.

 

Infidelity hurts just as violence does, if not more, and it sometimes is a form of psychological and emotional violence. Women who stay with perpetually unfaithful partners often exhibit similar psychological and social characteristics as women in abusive relationships, including deep sense of personal hurt, humiliation, rage, betrayal, low self esteem and a sense of worthlessness, dependency on the perpetrator and a longing for their approval and warped sense of reality. Infidelity, just as violence against women, also results in negative psycho-social and health consequences, including depression, panic/anxiety attacks and post traumatic stress symptoms/reactions such as obsessive pondering over details of the affair/s, continuously watching out for further signs of betrayal and flashbacks.

 

Infidelity in ongoing relationships often mimic the cycle of violence against women, with a typical cycle including tension building up phase, pain (explosion/violence phase), brief period of remorse and guilt and then the reconciliation (honeymoon phase). Philandering men are almost always oblivious and insensitive about the pain they inflict on their partners, just as men who perpetrate physical and psychological violence. They are the epitome of lies, deception and denial. They rarely accept responsibility for their unfaithfulness – they adopt the mantra it wasn’t me’, ‘blame the devil’ or play the victim by accusing the partner of pushing them into having an affair/s. When busted, they may act guilty and remorseful but they often continue with the infidelity as soon as the partner is back in the ‘box’. Women victims of infidelity just as women victims of intimate partner violence often try to make sense out of nonsense - they may try to rationalise their partners cheating/abusive behaviour, sympathise with him, engage in self blame for their partner’s behaviour or go out of their way to appease and please him hoping to win his approval. Subsequently, the cycle continues.  

 

Changing behaviour patterns in both infidelity and intimate partner violence against women contexts does not just happen – it calls for deliberate and decisive action. Sitting back and pretending that all is or will be well with time, staying together for the sake of the children or to maintain the illusion of a loving couple/role model family/’complete’ family, blaming the third party and others for your predicament or co-perpetrating infidelity and violence to get even and hit back will do nothing to change unfaithful behaviour. Taking personal responsibility and control of one’s life and destiny would be a good starting point. The unfaithful partner must take responsibility for his behaviour and subsequent negative consequences, genuinely commit to change and make deliberate efforts to make and sustain the change. Women in such contexts must draw a red line and chose between resigning themselves to perpetual pain and suffering or harnessing their inner strength to reclaim their lives and happiness with or without the man. If the woman choses to remain in the relationship, then it is critical that she is clear about the shit that she can or cannot take. If the scenerio involves a child born out of wedlock, the woman needs to be alive to the reality that the man may never completely severe contact with the other woman. For the woman who decides to go her separate way...."you are better alone than sick with someone else"....your children are better off without exposure to negative energy in the relationship.

The reverse also applies.   

Quantity Vs Quality is not the Issue

Reading through today’s Daily Nation newspaper, I came across an opinion article by Dr Joyce Nyairo on Women’s Representatives in relation to the Marriage Bill debate in the National Assembly last week. It was thought provoking but also irked me a bit...

Dr Nyairo was seemingly disappointed and frustrated with the lacklustre performance of women MPs present during the debate. Fair enough. I was equally disappointed in the seeming ‘lack of content’ in their submissions as well as display of seeming lack of strategy. It was similarly disappointing that nearly all the ‘seasoned’ women MPs were pitching camp in New York for the 58^th session of the United Nation Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Given the emerging gender dimensions since publication of the Bill, the women MPs surely needed to have been more strategic.

We parted ways at the point the article seemed positioned to argue on the value addition of women representation in parliament, particularly where the same is achieved through affirmative action. The first argument was that quantity does not always translate into quality. Absolutely true! However it is also true that this is not unique to women. The quality of submissions by the majority men MPs bear me out. Which begs the question…why is it that the debate on quantity versus quality always comes up in relation to women’s representation? Why is that we are wont to be rather quick to criticize women leaders for their supposed inadequacies yet don’t use similar parameters in relation to men leaders? Why the double standards?

Having more women in Parliament may not be directly proportional to better representation on women’s issues but the numbers do make a positive difference, no matter how small the difference may seem. The cited great contributions by great women MPs of yore such as Phoebe Asiyo, Eddah Gachukia, and Grace Onyango cannot be gainsaid. That notwithstanding, the small numbers of women MPs then could not have possibly been a strength to their causes. They may as well serve as classic examples of the difference it would make if we had many such women in Parliament.

The current crop of women MPs may be a very pale shadow of the likes of Phoebe Asiyo, Eddah Gachukia, Grace Onyango, Rose Waruhiu, Dr. Julia Ojiambo, Martha Karua, Njoki Ndungu. That notwithstanding it is insulting and demeaning to insinuate that current women MPs are subsequently not ‘self respecting women of substance and superior acumen’ or that they lack ‘good brains, focused attention and a public service mentality’. It is also in bad taste to speculate that their attendance of CSW may have been part of a strategy towards serving ‘dubious causes’.  

I also cannot fully reconcile myself with the generalized assertion that affirmative action embodied in the Women’s Representatives function ‘has become a site of tokenism’ that ‘breeds mediocrity and entitlement in equal measure’. There are countless positive results out of the agency of some women beneficiaries of Affirmative Action, just as there are countless ‘zero’ results from some other female as well as male beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. It would be unfair to use the latter group to rubbish all affirmative action.     

Why do women stay in abusive relationships?

I visited a sick friend admitted in a hospital in Nairobi sometimes back. Her ‘neighbour’ was apparently a victim of physical violence by her husband – she had a broken leg and we gathered that one of her ears was not functioning properly following the violence. My friend could not understand why the woman was feigning reasons for her broken leg or why she did not want her parents to know about it, or why she would not press criminal charges. Worse still, the husband came to see her and they were all lovey dovey over each other and reciting their commitment to each other. My friend said she felt like drawing the curtain and asking the woman to wake up and smell the coffee. My response....not surprising at all....it’s all too common. Many women in abusive relationships dont and/or may never smell the coffee.....

Of the many frameworks that have been developed to understand violence against women in intimate relationships, one that is permanently etched in my mind is the “Cycle of Violence” because it fits almost perfectly with the lived/living experiences of many women across different contexts.   In this regard, abusive relationships have been found to follow a specific three stage cyclic pattern comprised of tension building phase, Explosion phase and Honeymoon phase.

Tension building phase is characterized by  increased tension and stress in the relationship which may be triggered by day to day life challenges - poor communication, financial worries, job related problems, children etc. This phase is seemingly all about denial and rationalization. The man exhibits negative behaviour, ranging from finding fault with seemingly minor issues, extreme criticism, unwarranted demands, obsessive jealousy, controlling movement and interactions with others, to other forms of verbal and psychological abuse, and blames everything and everybody else other than himself. The woman adopts coping mechanisms – she faults herself and makes effort to appease the man e.g. by complying with his demands, avoiding to ‘annoy him’....but ultimately, the tension at some point boils over...can result to stress related illnesses such as headaches/migraines that won’t go away even with medication, depression etc    

Explosion phase is the all familiar phase – the accumulated tension and stress ‘explodes’ into the ‘real/actual’ violence. The violence is not necessarily physical; it can take the form of extreme psychological/emotional abuse such as name calling/insults, repeated and constant belittling, criticizing, berating, humiliating and blaming, isolating from friends and family, excessive monitoring, restricting or denying access to and control over money and other resources, perceptions of entitlement, jealous actions and possessiveness, emotional manipulation to get his way and other controlling behaviours. During explosion phase, the man may try to justify his actions, blame the woman for his actions, minimize the violence, or become unpredictable and difficult to reason with. The woman may passively accept the abuse or minimize it to herself or others – she may blame herself, feel guilty for ‘letting things get out of hand’, find ways to keep it private, feel trapped or may look for help.  

The honey moon stage is just that – honeymoon! The man will do just about anything to placate the woman to avoid any negative consequences and to achieve reconciliation. He will be calm, loving, and profusely apologetic for his misbehaviour, offer gifts with promises to change and that 'it will never happen again' and act genuinely sorry in order to draw the woman back into the relationship. The woman may initially consider and plan to leave the relationship or even leave the relationship, but may feel guilty about possibly 'breaking' the relationship. She may feel overwhelmed by thoughts of ‘time wasted and starting life afresh’, and ‘life without him’ and subsequently may minimize the violence. The woman is often hopeful that he will change, that there is still a chance to ‘save’ and protect the relationship from imminent failure and is desperate to get back ‘the man that she fell in love with’. She therefore easily falls for the hook, line and sinker and forgives the man. As soon as the woman is in the ‘box’, the honeymoon is over and the cycle begins ....again.

The tragedy is that as the cycle repeats itself again and again, the tension building and honeymoon phases get shorter and the explosion phase gets longer and more intense over time. Unfortunately, the emotional reconnection and renewed sense of hope at honeymoon stage serves as the epitome of women’s victimization par excellence! Women are trapped in abusive relationships because of the constant return to honeymoon stage.

Sounds familiar?

Systemic injustice of yore alive and kicking....

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