Nairobi Syndicate content

Gender-based Violence in Africa – A Position

The following pages can only be described as an attempt on providing a glimpse of an insight into the vastness that is – today - defined as Gender-based Violence (GBV) and its impacts on the African landscape. The sheer size of the terrain reflects the fact that GBV seems to be a rather resilient and destructive, yet largely hidden social activity, that is firmly rooted in the existence and prevalence of patriarchal relationships of power at every level of human interaction within the historically often male-dominated societies around the globe.


Awino Okech

I was born and raised in Kenya. I began my engagement with community development work right after high school, through an apprenticeship with a local Kenyan organization KEFEADO based in Kisumu, Kenya. I had an opportunity to work alongside other educationalists on a one year programme that dealt with the questions of enrolment, retention and completion of school by girls. Having completed high school in what was a considered a school in rural Kenya, the multiplicity of issues that young women in Busia and later Migori (both administrative districts in Kenya) where the project was replicated was for me a far cry from what I had experienced and had then considered ‘suffering’. I can safely argue that my interest in women’s rights begun at this point.