In Kenya today, a woman can be raped, murdered, and buried without justice while the country’s political class offers little more than silence, hashtags, and hollow committees. The recent formation of a Technical Working Group on Femicide is the latest performance in a political culture that treats women’s lives as expendable.
Make no mistake: Kenya is facing a gendered security crisis. Femicide is rampant, with dozens of young women murdered each year, often by known perpetrators or intimate partners. Many are lured through digital platforms, yet others are simply failed by police indifference and a broken justice system. According to Femicide Count Kenya, there were at least 80 reported cases in 2024 alone and countless more went unreported.
And where, we must ask, is the security and political leadership of Kenya?
Shockingly absent are the women sitting at the apex of Kenya’s security architecture including those who serve on the National Security Council. These are women who have broken ceilings and carry enormous influence. Yet, in the face of a national femicide crisis, they have remained muted or mechanical in their response, failing to frame femicide as the national security threat it is.
Article 240 of the Constitution establishes the National Security Council and consists of the President, Deputy President, Cabinet Secretary for Defence, Cabinet Secretary for Interior and National Administration, Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chief of Kenya Defence Forces, Attorney-General, the Director-General National Intelligence Service and the Inspector-General of the National Police Service.
The National Security Council’s mandate includes integration of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to national security in order to enable the national security organs to cooperate and function effectively together with assessment and appraisal of the objectives, commitments and risks to the Republic in respect of actual and potential national security capabilities. The National Security Council also reports to Parliament on the state of security in Kenya annually.
Of these dockets, the Attorney-General Dorcas Oduor, the Cabinet Secretary for Defence Soipan Tuya and the Deputy Director-General of Kenya's National Intelligence Service Agnes Shikuku are women. There are even more honourable mentions of other women leading agencies directly linked to the National Security Council.
In addition to this line up is Monica Juma, who is the current National Security Advisor to the President, a seasoned diplomat and formerly a Cabinet Secretary serving in the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Where are these women? Where are their voices when women are raped and dehumanised by goons during episodes of civil strife in the country?
Perhaps at a later date, we shall address the egregious display of incompetence by female legislators in the current Parliament but for now, where are the women in the National Security Council?
Security is not only about borders and bandits. It is about whether a woman can leave her house, take a taxi, visit a date, or report a violent partner without ending up dead. When women are killed with impunity and the State responds with task forces instead of action, that is a security failure. Silence from female security leaders is not neutrality, it is neglect.
Male MPs are no less culpable. Many have happily outsourced this issue to their female colleagues, perpetuating the harmful myth that women’s safety is a “women’s issue.” Yet they will pack press briefings to defend roads, stadiums, and sugar cartels. Why is it easier to argue about infrastructure than to legislate against femicide?
When women marched to demand action, they were not asking for a working group. They were demanding what the Constitution already guarantees under Article 29; security of the person, for every person. That promise is being broken daily. To this end, Kenya needs an explicit law on femicide which shall define, criminalise and effectively punish the crime.
