People’s Liberation Party leader Martha Karua has launched a blistering attack on President William Ruto’s administration, accusing the government of neglecting its constitutional mandate to protect Kenyan women and children from escalating, unchecked violence. Speaking at a high-profile press briefing in Nairobi on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, Karua declared the situation a full-blown governance and constitutional crisis, calling out what she described as the state’s normalization of systemic brutality.
The address coincided with the launch of the “Act Now to End GBV” advocacy campaign, an initiative designed to pressure state organs out of passive observation and into structural execution. Backing her demands with harrowing public metrics, Karua highlighted that nearly one in three Kenyan women experiences physical violence in her lifetime, while one in eight suffers sexual violence. Between January 2025 and March 2026 alone, official national records logged over 10,500 child protection cases, including thousands of abductions, abandonments, and child trafficking incidents.
A central target of Karua’s criticism was the state’s failure to act on its own policy blueprints. Specifically, she demanded the immediate, fully-funded implementation of the recommendations outlined by the Nancy Baraza-led Technical Working Group on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. The task force submitted its comprehensive action plan directly to President Ruto at State House on January 26, yet months later, the executive continues to sit on the document while violent crimes against women escalate without a coordinated state response.
The legal veteran pointed directly to the infamous Kware dumpsite killings as a glaring symptom of institutional rot and police complicity. Karua openly questioned how dozens of dismembered bodies could be systematically dumped over time just meters from a local police station in Mukuru, without raising suspicion. She slammed the state’s subsequent investigative failures, citing the highly suspicious escape of the prime suspect from custody as clear proof that powerful actors remain shielded from accountability.
This culture of impunity, according to the opposition leader, is actively enabled by the government’s failure to address skyrocketing youth unemployment, which has created a fertile breeding ground for organized criminal elements. She warned that politically connected “goons” are increasingly operating under the direct protection of security agencies, turning violence into a commodified tool. Adrian Kibe, representing the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) at the briefing, echoed these warnings, adding that sexual and gender-based violence has become a deliberate, weaponized tactic used to intimidate and drive women out of public and democratic spaces.
Karua’s newly launched campaign marks a decisive shift in strategy for Kenyan civil society, transitioning from moral appeals to hard legal and political demands. By pulling together civil groups, legal minds, and community organizers, the “Act Now” movement plans to directly hold institutional heads—including those in the Interior Ministry and the National Police Service—personally liable for failures in protective duties. The message from the briefing was clear: Kenyan women will no longer accept a reality where their right to life is treated as an optional policy debate.
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