A report from Amnesty International has highlighted gender-based violence in Kenyan slums.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International has released a disturbing report on women’s experiences in the slums of Nairobi in Kenya – highlighting widespread violence and rape.

In its report published yesterday (7 July), Insecurity and Indignity: Women’s experiences in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, it revealed that women and girls in Nairobi’s slums live under the constant threat of sexual violence, leaving them often too scared to leave their houses to use communal toilet and bathroom facilities.

The study was conducted in Kibera, Mathare, Korogocho, and Mukuru kwa Njenga slums between November 2009 and February this year. It also details how the failure of the government to incorporate the slums in urban plans and budgets has resulted in poor access to services like sanitation, which hits women in slums and informal settlements especially hard.

Only 24% of slum residents have access to household toilet facilities, according to government figures, so most residents must walk about 10 minutes to go to the bathroom, putting them at greater risk of attack.

“Women in Nairobi’s settlements become prisoners in their own homes at night and sometimes well before it is dark,” said Godfrey Odongo, Amnesty International’s East Africa researcher.

“They need more privacy than men when going to the toilet or taking a bath and the inaccessibility of facilities make women vulnerable to rape, leaving them trapped in their own homes.

“The fact that they are unable to access even the limited communal toilet facilities also puts them at risk of illness.”

Unable to leave their one-roomed houses after dark, many women in informal settlements resort to ‘flying toilets’ – using plastic bags thrown from the home to dispose of waste.

The situation is compounded by the lack of police presence in the slums and when women fall victim to violence they are unlikely to see justice done. Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum and home to up to a million people, has no police post.

The women who took part in the study said the violence within the confines of their home was the greatest threat. The perpetrators include family members and their spouses and partners. An official of a non-governmental women’s legal aid centre in Kibera says they receive up to 10 cases of domestic violence every week — mostly women beaten up or raped by their spouses.

Survivors of physical sexual abuse at home also do not feel able to report it. One woman said: “Although my husband often beats me up, I just have to stay because I am married. I do not report it because police will simply tell us to reconcile.”

The women also keep these abuses under wraps because they lack faith in the justice system and the male-dominated police force. When a woman steps out of her house, more violence awaits her from youth gangs – again often involving men that she knows.

The report further indicts the police; in the few instances that government security forces interact with the slum dwellers, mainly to quell riots, they often commit sexual abuses and other human rights violations.

Leveraging the report’s findings, Amnesty International has called on the Kenyan government to enforce landlords’ obligations to construct toilets and bathrooms in the slums and settlements and provide assistance to structure owners who are unable to meet the costs of constructing toilets and bathrooms.

It says that the government must also take immediate measures to improve security, lighting and policing and ensure that relevant government authorities coordinate their efforts to improve the water and sanitation situation in the settlements.

Click here to read the report and find out more.