AFRICA | ADVOCACY & POLICY | VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | HEALTH | ENVIRONMENT
Stop Sextortion for Water in Kenya!
WORDS BY MARICA FLORE | 23 APRIL 2024
Kenya is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. According to Water.org, about 15 million out of 53 million Kenyans lack access to safe water, and 22 million lack access to improved sanitation. Furthermore, in 2020, UNICEF certified that 9.9 million people drink directly from contaminated surface water sources, and an estimated five million people practice open defecation. Only 25% of the population have hand-washing facilities with soap and water at home.
The water crisis concerns everyone in Kenya, but women and girls are disproportionately affected by the lack of it. They bear the responsibility for water collection in their families, and since they are desperate for water, corrupt water vendors take advantage of this situation by forcing them into sex for just a few liters.
They have no choice. Families spend an average of Ksh 1,400 per month on water. This means that poorer families cannot afford the required amount of water without offering sex to vendors. Other factors contributing to this abuse are overcrowding and women and girls queueing for many hours at water points.
This crime has a name: sextortion. Rather than money, sex is used to pay for services. It occurs when those entrusted with power use it to sexually exploit those dependent on that power. The word was first used by the International Association of Women Judges in 2009 to raise awareness of this phenomenon after noticing that sextortion was not mentioned in the 2005 United Nations Convention against Corruption. In Kenya, sextortion is one of the most prevalent and silent forms of violence and corruption in access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). When locals use the term “water for water”, everyone knows that the real meaning is “sex for water”.
Sextortion is a gender issue: women and girls are the ones in charge of collecting water and most of the water points in informal settlements are male-owned and male-managed. This means that men have undue power over decisions affecting water availability and, therefore, can easily exploit women. They capitalize on the socio-economic vulnerabilities of women and girls to coerce them into sex for water.
The impact is devastating. In Africa, women and girls spend approximately 200 million hours per year searching for water. This takes girls away from education and compromises their futures. As a consequence, women have higher chances than men to be caught in the vicious cycle of poverty.
Additionally, sextortion increases the risk to women and girls of contracting HIV/AIDS becoming pregnant, and suffering shame and social marginalization, with the possibility of being cast out of their communities. This social stigma creates a vicious circle. According to the Kenya Water and Sanitation Civil Society Network (KEWASNET), most victims/survivors of sextortion do not report abuse due to reasons including a fear of reprisal, stigmatization by the community, feelings of guilt and shame, being bribed, and lack of information on reporting mechanisms.
KEWASNET also point out that in Kenya “Sextortion is difficult to prosecute as the existing laws, regulations, policies and strategies do not define or recognize it as a form of corruption. Furthermore, data and information around it is scanty or non-existent due to limited research”. In other words, forcing women to pay for water with sex is not illegal. Now – according to Kenya women’s rights groups – it seems that the government is considering a law to make this abuse illegal. However, sextortion for water is not a phenomenon confined to Kenya: experts estimate that tens of thousands of women and girls around the world face this violence. Sex for water abuse has been documented in Bangladesh, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and other West African countries.
So, what solutions can counter this silent violence? First, it is necessary to develop a legal framework that enables prosecution of sextortion, along with information on prevention, and provision of safe, confidential, and gender-sensitive reporting mechanisms that offer victims access to physical, psychological, health or legal support.
Second, alternatives must be given by finding other places and organizations that supply water in a safe environment. From a gender perspective, other important measures include strengthening the level of women’s participation and involvement in WASH decision-making structures at the community level, as well as empowering women and girls economically, to help them escape poverty.
Lastly, access to water is connected to climate change. In Kenyan slums, water is already a precious and rare resource, but with global warming, its availability will become scarcer and more unpredictable. There is water stress everywhere and it can’t be ignored that the vulnerabilities created by climate change are gendered, with women being disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of the rising global temperatures. It’s time for everyone to speak up about sextortion and push for a law to make sex-for-water exploitation illegal, ending the total impunity for perpetrators.