Instead, the commission was asked to recommend to President Kibaki immediate prosecution of those who raped or committed other forms of gender-based violence and are still on the run.

Ms Regina Karega, the chairperson of the National Commission on Gender and Development, told the commission sitting at Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, that all the culprits should be charged by December 28.

Face the law

Both the murderous gangs and uniformed officers who committed the atrocities should face the law without discrimination, Ms Karega, who gave the recommendations on behalf of 40 organisations which deal with Gender Based Violence (GBV), said.

"We recommend immediate provision of security to the victims, mainly women, who are here and are willing to give an account of what they went through," she told the commission. Women, some elderly, from Mathare and Kibera slums sat pensively through the proceedings as they waited to recall the atrocities.

"Twenty women have gone public before and have now expressed the desire to testify before this commission of inquiry," said Ms Millicent Obaso, a GBV programme officer with Care International, an NGO.

Ms Obaso said of the cases they had already handled, 76 per cent were rapes committed in full view of other members of the family. She told the commission of a case where a woman, her daughter and daughter-in-law were gang-raped in Nairobi's Mathare slums in January.

"When the man came and saw what had happened, he said that was the end of his family as it was a taboo to live with a woman he had seen being rape. He walked out on the woman and married another," she said.

"These victims are traumatised and others have been infected with HIV. We are urging the commission to ensure strong evidence was obtained so that these perpetrators do not escape," she added. Although she did not have the total number of the victims, she said some records are at Nairobi Women's Hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital and the Amref Hospital in Kibera where they sought treatment.

Fida-Kenya executive director Jane Onyango told of a 45-year-old woman in Mathari slums who on January 1, was accosted by a gang of about 20 young men who raped her in turns. "When she came to, she found herself at Kenyatta Hospital. She did not know how she got there," she said.

"Another is a 33-year-old woman whose husband sodomised her telling her he regretted having married from her tribe. He then threw her out of her house but left the kids behind," Ms Onyango told the hushed hall.

Scores of men were also sodomised but were too traumatised to go public, she said. During Tuesday's hearings, three witnesses who represented organisations which collected data on the violence accused the police and the General Service Unit of being among the perpetrators.

Other recommendations are the implementation of the Sexual Offences Act, integrate conflict resolution in the school and colleges syllabi and open mobile courts to deal with gender based violence.

Mugo Njeru The Nation