Women’s groups in Kenya are calling for long-overdue action to tackle rampant gender-based violence in the country after the death of another athlete at the hands of her partner.
Rebecca Cheptegei lost her fight for life in the early hours of Thursday, four days after her boyfriend poured petrol over her and set her ablaze at her home in western Kenya.
The 33-year-old Ugandan long-distance runner, who had recently competed at the Paris Olympics and was a mother of two young daughters, was the third female athlete to be killed in Kenya since 2021.
“This is Femicide,” Njeri Migwi, the founder of Usikimye, an organisation that fights gender-based violence, posted on X after Cheptegei’s death.
“First and foremost, the government needs to take a stance,” she told AFP on Wednesday, “because the government doesn’t really do anything about it.”
“Most of this violence, gender-based violence, is not viewed as a crime,” she added.
“The patriarchal attitudes that we have in this country are abhorrent.”
She said fraught situations were exacerbated when women became the breadwinners, often providing for their immediate and extended families, as in the case of Cheptegei.
“If you look at it, it’s financial violence.”
– ‘National disaster’ –
Statistics on the number of victims of gender-based violence in Kenya vary widely, which campaigners say masks the true scale of the problem.
In 2022, Kenya recorded 725 women died in gender-related killings, the highest since 2015, according to data collated by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Femicide Count Kenya, which pulls data from local media, said 152 women were killed in 2023.
“This staggering number only represents cases reported in the media — the true count is likely much higher,” the organisation said on its website.
The Africa Data Hub, working with data science company Odipodev and Africa Uncensored, estimate that between 2016 and 2023 more than 500 women were murdered.
Thousands of women protested in the capital, Nairobi, earlier this year, with rights groups urging the government to treat the deaths as a “national disaster”.
The killing of Cheptegei follows the murder of two high-profile Kenyan athletes.
In October 2021, record-breaking Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop, 25, was stabbed to death at her home in the renowned Rift Valley running hub of Iten.
Her estranged husband is on trial over her murder and has denied the charges.
In April 2022, Kenyan-born Bahrainian athlete Damaris Mutua was also found dead in Iten in a suspected domestic violence incident.
– ‘Hold perpetrators accountable’ –
Tirop’s Angels, a group set up to combat gender-based violence after her death, said Cheptegei’s passing “painfully echoes the tragedy” that led to the formation of their organisation.
“The shadow of this ongoing violence must not be ignored,” it said in a post on Instagram.
“We urge the public, sports bodies, and the government to unite in taking meaningful steps to protect women and girls, ensuring that no more lives are lost.”
Kenyan President William Ruto’s adviser on women’s rights, Harriet Chiggai, said Cheptegei was another victim of “the ever-silent pandemic” of domestic violence.
She said about 34 per cent of Kenyan women had suffered sexual or other physical attacks from the age of 15, describing it as an “ugly phenomenon”.
Her office, Chiggai said, was working with the sports ministry on mechanisms on the prevention, reporting and response to gender-based violence in sports.
FIDA-Kenya, a women’s legal aid organisation, said it was hugely saddened by events.
“It is time to hold perpetrators accountable and demand action to prevent further tragedies,” it said on X.
“This must stop,” said campaigner Valerie Aura, a Nguvu Collective leader who is petitioning the government to create safe houses for women fleeing violence.
“We are seeing this happen again because there are no heavy penalties for the perpetrators,” she told AFP.
“We need to hear the government declare femicide a crisis,” she said.
“Why is the government quiet? Why are they not doing anything? Why are women not protected?”