Gender Based Violence Is One Of The Biggest Forms Of Poverty (graphic content)

Poverty is like family. It comes in all shapes, forms and sizes… more like magnitude. It is a sad reality that with all the poverty in the world we continue to create our own poverty to add to the global misery that we are all trying to escape. Among them is the issue of gender based violence which continues to burden today’s world…never mind all the buzz that has come about it.

My heart broke the other day as I browsed about and came across an article that featured short stories of a handful of people who have survived gender based violence mostly from their families and societies but have the most painful scars I ever saw in my life…a handful that represented hundreds and thousands on such cases.

We are failing ourselves when we assume that this issue will soon come to be a thing of the past because while it remains illegal as a violation of human rights, the vice is very much prevalent in today’s world. Kenya is no exception. How many times have we heard on the news and even in our very homes of such unfortunate incidences? Now, before you dismiss this article as to having feminist grounds, I want to state here that men are just as susceptible to gender based violence as women are, granted incidences on the latter are more rampant.

You have heard thousands of people talk about “imagine it was your mother, imagine it was your sister, it was your auntie etc and all the other mammis in your life” and while that hypothetical situation hit home and raised awareness as it continues to do, I want to bring you the harsh reality void of any emotional trauma that comes with a hypothetical situation such as the above mentioned.

Look at the photogrid I made. I had a wide selection of pictures on the subject sourced from Uncle Google images. Look carefully, zoom in. Look at these survivors of gender based violence. Look at the scars and disfiguration they have to live with because we did not come to their rescue sooner to protect them from having to deal with consequent scars. Ask yourself whether any human being deserves to innocently.

 We are loud and proud that we I’ve in a free world but the sad truth is that this is, perhaps, the biggest fallacy.  How can we allow both sexes to wage war and torture one another and still claim we live in a free world? We are slaves to our own silence. Oppression continues to thrive when it is fuelled with silence because breaking silence is a prerequisite for effective change through action.

My heart bleeds. Rebuke gender based violence…