Usikimye, Soweto, Kayole, Nairobi (2026)

26/08/2026

You've probably seen us mention CEDAW, the Maputo Protocol, or “shadow reports” and wondered what any of it actually has to do with you. Here's the short version.

These are international human rights treaties, agreements Kenya signed and ratified, promising to protect specific rights. Once Kenya ratifies one, Articles 2(5) and 2(6) of our own Constitution say it becomes part of Kenyan law. Not a suggestion. Law.

🔹 CEDAW (1979) - the international bill of rights for women. Kenya ratified it in 1984, with no reservations, no exceptions.

🔹 The Maputo Protocol (2003) - Africa's own women's rights treaty, covering everything from FGM to reproductive health to political participation. Kenya ratified it in 2010, but with one telling reservation: on the clause
guaranteeing access to safe abortion in cases of r**e, in**st, or danger to the mother's life. Even while promising to protect women, our government carved out an exception on exactly the point where women's bodily autonomy is most at stake.

🔹 The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) - the global roadmap for gender equality that Kenya, like almost every country, signed on to.

Why should you care? Because these instruments are part of why the two-thirds gender rule exists in our Constitution. Why the FGM Act exists. Why the Domestic Violence Act exists. Why the National Gender and Equality Commission exists.

But signing a promise and keeping it are two different things. That's why organisations like Usikimye, alongside our partners, write “shadow reports”: our own account of what's actually happening on the ground, submitted alongside the government's version, so the bodies reviewing Kenya hear both sides.

These treaties have no police, no army. Their only real power is public pressure, and a government's own reputation. Which means their power is also, in part, ours. The more Kenyans know what's been promised in our name, the harder it becomes for anyone to quietly let those promises expire.

Know the promises made in your name. Hold them to it.

24/08/2026

Case & Personal Overview
Primary Contacts / Victims: Abdi Nasir (Tana River – Madogo) and Rose Kimanzi (victim).
Mistaken Identity Origin: A warrant from Mwingi Law Court listed 4 names:
Joseph Kimanzi Mwaduma
Dan Mbila
Mary Kathina
Maureen Mueni Kitheka
False Arrest: Police claimed Rose Kimanzi was "Maureen Mueni Kitheka" and arrested her even after she presented her ID. This mistaken identity initiated the legal case.

Initial Contacts: Mwingi Police requested her to make a statement, followed by further incidents at Nguni Police Station.
Incident Breakdown (Police Violence & Assault)

Arrest & Initial Setup: Rose Kimanzi was arrested in June under no original charges.
Officer Involvement: On October 14, OCPD Nguni called the wife stating the police "made a mistake" and requested her to come to the station to get an apology.

Assault Details: Upon arrival, her husband was locked out. Officers threatened her at gunpoint, blindfolded her, and three police officers r**ed her.
Coerced Documentation & Poisoning/Disorientation: She was forced via thumbprints to sign documents (an arrest court warrant) declaring she was Maureen Mueni Kitheka. She was also forced to drink water by the police, which left her disoriented.
Medical Timeline & Psychological Impact
Garissa Hospital: Taken to Garissa Hospital where she fainted and remained unconscious for 5 days.
Nairobi Women's Hospital: In May 2026, COVAW assisted in admitting her to Nairobi Women's Hospital for 10 days.
Diagnosis: Diagnosed with a mental disorder due to severe trauma; referred to Mathare.
Current Medical Status: Under medication at Mathare, experiencing severe trauma triggers (runs and faints upon seeing men).
Financial Constraints: Needs to return to Mathare Hospital for follow-up appointments, but COVAW currently lacks funds.
Security, Ongoing Harassment & Institutional Breakdown
Active Threats: The perpetrator police officers remain actively working and continue to harass them, led by OCPD Nguni.
Home Intrusion: In July, unidentified individuals attempted to enter her home in Tana River; watchmen denied them entry.
Institutional Responses:
Internal Affairs (Nairobi), NPSC, KNHRC: Contacted, but provided no assistance.
IPOA & Media Stance: IPOA documented the case and initiated investigations. However, when she went to media house Citizen TV to follow up with IPOA, IPOA declined and refused to make a statement on the ongoing investigations. No formal legal actions have been taken against the officers.
Parliament: A citation was taken to Parliament, but they stated they are waiting for the conclusion of the IPOA investigation.
Referrals: Case was referred to Usikimye by Grace National Gender.

11/08/2026

A consultant general surgeon, Dr Dennis Masoba Nyambane of Kiambu County Government and Kiambu Level 5 Hospital, was detained for seven days after his wife, Mary Mwende Mutie, was allegedly stabbed to death with a kitchen knife during a domestic dispute at their Kiambu apartment, where they had moved in two weeks before. It's alleged the husband stabbed her on the heart, and Mary collapsed and died while trying to flee down the staircase

Dr Masoba appeared before a Kiambu court on Monday, August 10, where investigators were granted more time to complete the murder investigation and gather evidence. The court also ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Mary leaves behind a three-year-old son.

The question becomes is there no way to resolve interpersonal conflicts in relationships? Also the comments on social media are really triggering.

This is how rampart femicide has become.

Mary Mwende 🥀🕊️🥀 We speak your name

02/08/2026

Landmark Court Ruling Holds Employer Liable for Severe Gender-Based Abuse and Rights Violations

The Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered an employer to pay KSh 1 million to a survivor of workplace sexual harassment and bodily violation.

The ruling follows an incident where company management subjected approximately 35 women to forced stripping under the guise of "menstrual verification" which is a degrading retaliatory act that was triggered by a used sanitary product in a restroom bin.

The court affirmed that this invasive act violated the workers' constitutional rights to bodily autonomy, human dignity, privacy, and fair labour conditions, emphasizing that institutions cannot disown liability for the abuse perpetrated by their senior staff.

This ruling must serve as a stark warning to employers across Kenya: subjecting workers to degrading treatment and menstrual stigma is gender-based violence, pure and simple.

We honor the courage of the survivor who spoke up, refused to be silenced, and took this fight to the courts.

24/07/2026

Dear Sharon,

This is a letter from all of us , who never let the state of Kenya forget your femicide. We organized and marched under your banner from 2018 till 2026 , we have always spoken your name.

Yesterday , almost eight years since your abduction, r**e and murder while seven months pregnant; the courts finally said what we all knew since 2018 that you were murdered and the men responsible are guilty.

This feels like relief wearing a mask of justice because justice delayed this long has already extracted it's cost. Eight years of hearing, adjournments even a pandemic in between. 8 years Sharons family had to keep grieving in public by a court schedule.

Let's name what it took to get this far - it moved because we refused to look away, activists , women, journalists and ordinary people kept showing up, kept saying her name,kept standing outside courtrooms long after the news cycle moved on.

The sentencing is set for 18 August and we will be there too. The way we have always been.

Sharon deserved a country that protected her while she was still alive and not one that took eight years to admit what happened to her after she was gone. She would have been 35 years and her child would have been 7years.

Rest now Sharon 🕊️🕊️🕊️
Justice has been served. Go well Nyarmama.

11/07/2026

Anna Bahati 5years
Stacy Nyanchama 4years
Mercy Nyambura 12years

Defiled. Strangled. Poisoned. Dumped.

Femicide is no longer just an epidemic killing adult women; it has escalated into a horror where our youngest children are being hunted, defiled and dumped.

What is disturbing is the terrifying reality of the perpetrators , child victims being brutalized by teenagers, boys who are themselves also minors. As a nation are we ready to grapple with what's going on?

These children are being shaped at watching a culture where children watch violence go unpunished. Impunity is never an accident, it's a choice - slow or no investigations, slow justice and no accountability has brought us here.

We demand
1. Real intervention for boys before violence becomes their language
2. Emergency level forensic and judicial response
3. Grassroots mental health infrastructure in every community
4. A government that protects children as a non negotiable priority not an afterthought.

These deaths are an indictment to the Government

Say Their Names

Anna Bahati 🥀🕊️🥀 We speak your name
Stacy Nyanchama 🕊️🥀🕊️ We are so sorry baby
Mercy Nyambura 🥀🕊️🥀 We remember you

The measure of a society is not in how it responds to tragedy, but in how effectively it prevents it and how it protects it's children.

This is Femicide

07/07/2026

Shantel Makena - 10 years old
Natasha Merisa - 10 years old

Shantel was found in her uncle's house, she had been defiled and murdered; her body arranged with a belt around her neck to look like she had taken her own life. This was in Kibirichia

Natasha was kidnapped, defiled, murdered and dumped in a pit latrine in Kakamega.She was thrown away like she did not matter.

Shantel and Natasha, both ten. Girls with a futures, families and a right to safety that this country has refused to protect. Their families are demanding full and speedy investigations , prosecution and justice. Not silence.

We say their names because they were not just statistics, they matter.

Natasha Merisa 🕊️🥀🕊️ We speak your name
Shantel Makena 🥀🕊️🥀 We remember you

They should have been in school tomorrow, at play safe but instead families are burying children. Femicide does not spare little girls either . A country that has yet to declare femicide a national crisis. These are not isolated tragedies. We demand swift justice for these children and full implementation of the recommendations of the GBV Taskforce as well as real and measurable protection for the children of Kenya.

These children should not be another name added to a list that we never should have had to start.

02/07/2026

UNTIL WHEN!!!
Today, like many of you, I scrolled through my feed and was met with a horror that should paralyze this nation with shame. But instead, there is a terrifying, deafening silence.

Our women are not just being killed; they are being hunted, mutilated, and even beheaded. Their bodies are being discarded in thickets, dumped like trash, torn apart by a cruelty that defies humanity. Every week, names move through our headlines, turn into brief social media trends, and then fade away into the background.
When a home becomes a crime scene, when public spaces become open graveyards and when the bodies of women are reduced to severed limbs and dumped statistics, we have failed. This is not a domestic conflict This is femicide. It is a systemic erasure of women.

To the systems that move slowly, to the laws that refuse to name this a standalone crime, and to a society that looks away because the details are "too gruesome" your silence is a green light to murderers.

We refuse to normalize the mutilation of our daughters, our sisters, and our mothers. We refuse to let their names fade. How many more bodies must be pulled from the shadows before we treat this as the emergency it is?

I am too angry today, from the 8 year old baby girl to the 83 year old - all r**ed and murdered. This is Femicide.

Say Their Names 🥀🕊️🥀
Demand for justice 🕊️🥀🕊️

Don't let them be another statistic. Do Not be silent.

25/06/2026

SAY HER NAME: Joy Kanini (25years)

A daughter, a friend and young woman with her whole life ahead of her. Last week her life was snuffed away in the most brutal and gruesome way possible in Ngangarithi, Nyeri County.

Her boyfriend John Muriithi is said to have murdered and dismembered her body likely for easier disposal. Parts of her body stuffed in a sack were dumped along the road.
The DCI raided Muriithis house where they confirmed she was killed inside the room before her body was moved.

Her head is missing.

There's nothing as devastating as a parent calling you to ask you to appeal to the public to help them find their child's missing head to give her a fitting burial.

Joy's family is broken, demanding answers and justice. We stand with her family. We refuse to let Joy become yet another statistic. The suspect is on the run. We demand the arrest of John Muriithi .enya.

Do not let the news move on. Amplify her name until he is behind bars.

Joy Kanini 🕊️🥀🕊️ We speak your name
Joy Kanini 🥀🕊️🥀 We are fight for you

23/06/2026

Hello Usikimye Team,

My name is Kelvin Muturi. I am writing on behalf of my family to ask you to help us tell the story of Annitah Ray, my cousin, who was murdered in an act of femicide. She would have been 31this may.

We searched for her for 3 days. Her friends, her cousins, her siblings, everyone refused to give up. When we finally found her, the smell reached us before we could get inside. Her shoes were at the door. A heavy blanket covered the window. We had to prepare our hearts before anyone broke that door open.

Inside, we found her lifeless in a pool of blood. She had been struck on the head with a heavy construction stone. Her hair had been pulled out. We could barely recognise her at the mortuary. Her young son Mwangi asked, “Kwani wamebadilisha Mum?” Her sister had to confirm her identity through her nail gel because the injuries were that severe.

She had paid her children’s school fees to a new school. She had plans for 2026. She never made it to their admission day.

It has been 5 months. We have been to the DCI on numerous occasions. No progress. No arrest.

The main suspect is Edwin Kanyotu. He is still missing. He had previously been jailed for r**e with grievous bodily harm and was released on bail after the victim failed to show up in court. His grandfather is Chief Kanyotu of Kiangai. Someone is helping him stay hidden. Someone out there knows where he is.

We are asking Usikimye to help us amplify Annitah’s story. She deserves to be known. Her children deserve justice. And Edwin Kanyotu must be found.

From the family of Ann Wangari . This is what injustice looks like.

Ann Wangare 🥀🕊️🥀 Do not rest until justice is found
Ann Wangare 🕊️🥀🕊️ We remember you today

Usikimye

26/08/2026

24/08/2026

11/08/2026

02/08/2026

24/07/2026

11/07/2026

07/07/2026

02/07/2026

25/06/2026

23/06/2026

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