Girls Advocacy Program Plan Kenya

Violence against girls and young women and the denial of their economic rights stand in the way of achieving meaningful gender equality. Serious violations of these human rights are affecting millions of girls and young women. Societies pay a high price for not tackling these issues. Child trafficking is mainly for purposes of child labour (mainly domestic, farm labour, and increasingly in mine and oil fields - though not in direct extraction of the minerals and oil, especially with the big mining and oil drilling companies) and sexual exploitation. According to US State Department Trafficking In Person’s Report (2015), Kenya is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation. Trafficking in Kenya can be divided into two domains, internal/domestic and international trafficking. According to National Crime Research Centre 2015 Human Trafficking report, most of the victims in domestic trafficking are sourced from rural areas and majority of those trafficked out of the country are sourced from urban areas (especially, low income areas and informal settlements), with girls forming the majority. Every year, about 14 million adolescent and teen girls are married, almost always forced into the arrangement by their parents. In developing countries, one in three girls is married by age 18; and one in nine by age 15. According to the latest UNFPA reports, one out of four girls are married before their 18th birthday in Kenya. In 2009, about 26% of the women aged 20-24 were married/in union before age of 18 years. Data shows very slow decline since 2003 (25%). Victims of these three forms of GBV selected by the Alliance in Kenya are mostly adolescent girls and young women from poor backgrounds in rural areas and urban informal settlements. These girls also have limited access to education opportunities and majority have had only primary level education (if at all, since some drop out of school before getting to the final grade of primary education). There is evidence that the gender gap in access to education is not closing.