Violence Against Women in Politics

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organisation in Kenya, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, are publishing a report today, examining patterns of sexual and gender-based violence against women during election seasons in Kenya and call upon the State to take immediate preventive actions in view of the upcoming 2022 general elections.

Following the publication of the IPU’s regional study on Sexism, harassment and violence against women in parliaments in Africa, many African parliaments accepted the IPU’s call to amplify the findings of the study and talk about sexism with the following local initiatives.

In December 2021, the IPU presented the African study at an online meeting of the Arab Parliament to mark the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence.

Gul Bano* and Karima* are activists who ran provincial branches of the ministry of women’s affairs in two different parts of Afghanistan. Their former offices have been taken over by the Taliban’s feared enforcers, the ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice.

They are now in hiding, afraid of the men they helped put in prison for domestic violence and other abuses, many of them in the Taliban or with family links to the militants.

Cheri Beasley is well aware of the challenges facing Black women who run for statewide office. “I know what it's like to hear the doubters and those who are skeptical that people of color can't win, because it's not what we're used to or who we envision in positions of power,” she said in an interview with NBC News.

The former judge has made two successful runs for statewide judicial positions, and this year she is running for North Carolina’s open Senate seat, joining a cohort of Black women looking to make history.