My name is Sarah Omega and I am a fistula survivor from Kenya. After my parents died, I was raped by a religious leader and became pregnant at age 19. A wrenching labor left me with fistula.
Kenya is poised to revise its constitution with a ban on abortion and language redefining life beginning at conception. Only three other countries have such constitutional prohibitions.
Hate crimes against homosexuals are connected to the political, social and legal environment in which they live. And in Africa religious groups are talking about morals but simultaneously stirring hatred directly leading to violence against homosexuals.
Kenyan women are still suffering at the hands of a male-dominated birth
control system.
While here it has, generally, become a widely accepted emergency option, the BBC
reported today that in Kenya, the emergency pill—or e-pill, as it’s
called there—has caught on as many women’s favorite method of birth
control, “some even buying the pills in advance.”
Kenyan women boycott sex in order to force male political leaders towards a truce.
Well-educated, politically aware Kenyans talk about about the positive changes an Obama presidency would bring to the world.
The ugly face of violence reared its head in Kenya after the presidential elections of December, and I now know that crisis was a window into the status of women’s rights in Kenya and the gaps in responding to sexual and gender-based violence in this country.
Since the crisis in Kenya began, I haven’t yet heard of a woman who picked up a machete and killed her neighbor. As in many conflict-ridden places in the world, women stand out as victims as well as the ones who are looking for peaceful means to resolve the situation.
Efforts to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS are about to go to waste in Kenya, if the current political crisis is not dealt with fast. Widespread sexual violence, displacement, and lack of access to providers are all contributing to the spread of the disease.
