Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW)

Project: Promoting women human rights and paving the way for women’s participation in 2012 general elections

Location: Kenya: Meru, Nyeri, Nairobi and Nakuru counties

Duration: 2011-2014
 
 
 

The situation

Although Kenya’s new 2010 constitution requires the elimination of gender discrimination, the government has not been able to guarantee the rights of women in Kenya, where women have been invisible in decision-making structures and domestic and sexual violence are endemic. In this context, survivors of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) face serious challenges related to access to justice and health services, with local authorities unresponsive to their needs and low rates of reporting due to lack of public confidence in these systems. Furthermore, women’s constitutional rights and allocation of the local budget to women’s needs are endangered by the marginalisation of women from national and county-level decision-making processes.

What Womankind is doing

Womankind is collaborating with our partner CREAW to:

• mitigate sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the province of Kibera, Nairobi, by strengthening support systems and services delivery

• increase women political participation at the local and national level, in order to include socio economic and political agendas of women in decision-making arenas

With our partner we are:

• Providing access to legal aid and health services for approximately 3,500 adolescent and young women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Kibera

• Creating a ‘one stop shop’ that will provide a holistic referral service to legal, medical and psychosocial providers for women victims of sexual and gender-based violence in Kibera

• Reaching 29,000 people through community radio shows and raising awareness of sexual and gender-based violence and the ‘one stop shop’ service

• Setting up a text messaging advocacy campaign on sexual and gender-based violence in order to popularize the one-stop shop with women in Kibera, which will reach 12,000 women

• Training 5 community-based organisations, such as Carolina for Kibera, Binti Pamija, Women Justice Empowerment Initiative Kibera, Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness, Kibera Paralegals Network, on SGBV in order to support CREAW to refer more women to service providers

• Supporting 15 policy makers within the National Commission on Gender and Development to implement the National Policy on Gender and Development and the gender-based violence framework

What we have achieved so far

The project started in August 2011 – check back in a few months for updates.