Boost for equality quest as Kisumu adopts gender policies
Ms Beatrice Odongo, the Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Gender, Culture and Tourism, during an interview in her office in Kisumu City on November 7, 2023.
What you need to know:
- Only Makueni, Meru, Migori, Kisumu and Isiolo, out of the 47 counties, have policies that promote gender equality, but Kisumu has gone a step further.
- Kisumu became the second county to launch a comprehensive policy designed to eliminate sexual and gender-based violence.
Kisumu is setting the pace in the realisation of gender equality through a raft of policies aimed at empowering women and girls.
Only five out of the 47 counties have policies that promote gender equality. They are Makueni, Meru, Migori, Kisumu and Isiolo. Kisumu has gone a step further.
The county has already put in place sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and gender mainstreaming policies and plans are at an advanced stage to launch the women’s empowerment policy.
In 2019, Kisumu became the second county to launch a comprehensive policy designed to eliminate sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
According to Beatrice Odongo, the County Executive Committee Member for Gender, Culture and Tourism, the SGBV policy seeks to tame SGBV and promote gender equality by setting up systems that protect, prevent and respond to these violations.
The policy, she adds, calls for the prioritisation of responsive interventions, including the allocation of sufficient financial and human resources geared towards supporting activities that redress these violations. It further creates mechanisms that will support survivors while ensuring SGBV laws are fully enforced at the local level.
Also read: Improve SGBV policies
“The SGBV policy talks about how to handle survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. It also talks of how perpetrators should be handled and treated. Survivors access medical services for free to enhance their access to justice,” Ms Odongo says.
The policy brings together state and non-state actors to enhance accountability, coordination, monitoring, and evaluation of programmes aimed at ending SGBV. It acknowledges that SGBV violations hurt women and girls disproportionately but covers the human rights of both genders.
Courtesy of the policy, the county has established SGBV steering committees and technical working groups that provide strategic policy direction towards the implementation of relevant laws, policies, and mobilisation of resources for SGBV protection, prevention, response, and coordination initiatives.
SGBV cases have been rampant in Kisumu, with women and girls being the major casualties. The 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) survey report shows that 11 per cent of women in Kisumu aged 15–49 have experienced sexual violence, with a further 7.0 per cent in the same age bracket having experienced sexual violence within the previous 12 months.
A further 36 per cent of women aged 15–49 said they had also experienced physical violence since age 15, and a further 26 per cent had experienced physical violence in the previous 12 months.
Fairness
Besides the SGBV policy, the county boasts a gender mainstreaming policy that provides a framework to accelerate the realisation of gender equality, non-discrimination and fundamental rights. The policy seeks to ensure women access socioeconomic opportunities, are part of leadership and decision-making and to tackle SGBV.
Ms Odongo notes that the policy has helped increase the number of women in the county’s public service. Of 375 revenue officers employed recently, for example, 120 were women, marking is an improvement from previous years, she says.
“The county has improved in terms of gender inclusion. Out of 10 county executive members, four are women. We have also put in place a gender mainstreaming committee, which has a representative from each department. My office normally gets a quarterly report on how many women have got job and business opportunities in every department.”
Besides the two policies, the county is finalising the women economic empowerment policy, which is focusing on mobilising resources to empower women and girls.
The county is in the process of transforming the policies into a bill that once passed by the county assembly will become law. Data collection and reporting of SGBV cases remain one of the major challenges facing the county.
To arrest this problem, Ms Odongo says they are carrying out a robust sensitisation campaign to prevail upon residents to report such cases to help them get data for proper planning and interventions.
Besides creating awareness of how to report, Kisumu, with partners, has done similar awareness of access to justice for survivors. Fatuma Nyerere, a human rights defender on Kaloleni estate, says the SGBV policy has helped many survivors to access justice.
She notes that the policy has led to the establishment of a one-stop shop for services, with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital offering free medical services to victims.
“We now have a 75 per cent success rate in access to justice because of the advocacy and awareness campaigns created courtesy of the policy,” Ms Nyerere says.
Kisumu is a beneficiary of a campaign initiated five years ago to tame cases of SGBV during the elections. The Italian government and UN Women entered into a partnership in 2019 through the “Let it Not Happen Again” project, towards enhancing prevention of and response to GBV and more specifically that against women.
The collaboration between UN Women and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) during the implementation of “Let it Not Happen Again” strengthened the capacity of justice actors to effectively prevent and respond to violence against women.
The campaign saw enhanced coordination among duty bearers during elections, particularly in 2022. It also strengthened early warning mechanisms and contingency planning to mitigate violence against women.
UN Women notes that these efforts and those of other external actors led to an election free of violence and discrimination against women and girls. It further notes that they contributed to the increase in the number of women elected to various positions.
In 2019, Kajiado became the first county in Kenya to develop and launch a robust policy designed to end female genital mutilation (FGM) at the community level. The policy, which is firmly grounded in the principles of gender equality, inclusivity, and non-discrimination, provides the legal framework to fast-track eradication of FGM. It creates structures that are cascaded to the ward level.
Bungoma, which has been in the news because of the high cases of teenage pregnancies, is in the process of coming up with a law to curb the problem. Deputy Governor Jennifer Mbatiany reveals the county has come up with an SGBV Bill that is already in the assembly.
The highlights of the Bill include the establishment of SGBV sub-county coordination units that will have key stakeholders crucial in the fight. “The Bill also makes provision for sexual and SGBV education and access to healthcare services and education for the survivors. It, in addition, makes provision for safe shelters and funding of GBV issues.”
