“A father has raped his nine-year-old daughter”: impunity harms democracy in Kenya

Winnie Obure arrives wearing a biker jacket, busy and apologizing for being late.

“I came from the Kamukunji Police Station,” she says.

“They have had a 15-year-old girl in custody for a week.

She has become pregnant from rape, but since no one claims her, they don't know where to take her and they bring her to me,” she says.

At 28, she runs a shelter in the shantytown of Pumwani Majengo, in Nairobi, where she, with her TeenSeed association, shelters dozens of girls and women who suffer sexual abuse.

But her patience is running out.

Her phone rings, and she ignores it.

“I don't know where I'm going to put it, we're running out of space.

They have temporarily given it to us, but soon we will not have it, ”she continues.

Obure created TeenSeed more than a decade ago to educate teenage girls about their rights, give them sex education and seek justice for episodes of abuse, but the latter occupies all her time.

“Yesterday we received a case of an 11-year-old girl who had been raped by a 46-year-old regional deputy candidate.

These are the most frustrating, because as political figures they are protected, ”she says angrily.

As he speaks, the phone rings again.

This time she answers.

She speaks for two minutes in which she runs her hands over her face, looks at the floor and her eyes glaze over.

“A nine-year-old girl, her father has raped her and she is in the police station”, she manages to say half in tears.

“Do you know how hard this is, day in and day out?

Sometimes I think about not taking it and leaving everything, but I can't”.

As a teenager, Obure was raped in her village in Kisumu, western Kenya, by a friend of her family who believed that she was within her rights to pay for her studies.

“I decided to leave school.

I can't trade my body for my education,” she states before waving goodbye to her, apologizing again.

“I bought a motorcycle for things like this, imagine that now I had to take a bus and take two hours in traffic.

It can't be,” she shakes her head.

Gender violence grows in elections

The conversation takes place one day before the Kenyan elections, this Tuesday, August 9.

Campaigns and the days after are usually times when peaks of gender-based violence are recorded.

“It is that moment in which people do not obey the laws, ideal for those who want to commit a rape, do so,” says Irene Soila, an adviser at the Kenya Human Rights Commission (HRC).

The institution tries to prevent, document and obtain justice for the victims.

"The process of proving a violation is not easy, they ask for many things and in elections it is most likely that you will not get justice," she says.

One of the main reasons for impunity is that the abusers are the ones who should be protecting them: the security forces.

In 2007, following Kenya's worst wave of post-election violence, the CHRK documented more than 900 cases of rape.

In 2017 there were more than 200, and 54% of them were committed by police officers.

"This year we have asked for the name and place of work of the deployed agents to be able to identify them," says Soila.

The institution has put a list of priorities that the Government must have to prevent violence in this electoral year, and although it assures that there is more receptivity than before, a robust strategy is lacking.

Jacqueline Mutere is running for the second time as regional MP for Nairobi.

She suffered a rape in the post-election violence of 2007 and reparations for victims of gender violence are her priority. David Soler

Despite the efforts of these institutions, the documented numbers do not tell the whole reality.

The 2007 post-election violence commission of inquiry found that more than 80% of victims in three of the four most populous cities, Nairobi, Nakuru and Eldoret, had not reported their cases and that more than 90% were paid less than a dollar a day.

Bureaucratic obstacles, lack of legal knowledge and low economic resources to litigate add to the stigma they face.

Change the system from power

One of the ways forward is to come to power to change the laws.

This is how Jacqueline Mutere sees it, a candidate for regional deputy for the Imara Daima district in Nairobi: "I am running because I want to initiate the change I want to see."

Her main rival is a woman, Jennifer Mumbua, but that is unusual.

Despite the fact that the 2010 Constitution requires that there be no more than two-thirds of representatives of the same gender in parliament, politics continues to be a minority.

In these elections, of the more than 16,000 candidates for all political positions, less than 2,000 were women.

They also suffer stigma from a patriarchal society where the female political figure is not accepted by all.

In this campaign there have been cases of discrimination, physical aggression and attacks on social networks.

"They have torn up my posters or have put others of men on top," says the candidate.

Mutere was one of more than 900 women who suffered rape in the post-election period of 2007. Years later, she created the Grace Agenda to raise awareness and seek justice, but she still has not received financial compensation, despite the fact that in 2015 President Uhuru Kenyatta promised a package of more than 80 million euros for the victims.

"Getting reparations for sexual violence is achievable and affordable and justice can start from the bottom, at the regional level," says Mutere, who assures that, if she gets the seat, this will be her priority, along with mental health.

As a result of that rape, 15 years ago, her daughter Princess was born: "My girl has grown up in a decent situation, but there are people who don't have it," she says.

For those people, she tries to change the system from within: "I hope to inspire other regions to adopt policies similar to mine."

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