Children are forced into arms trafficking in Nairobi's Korogocho slums.

Children In Crime

Sexual exploitation of children is a harsh reality that is happening everywhere around us. In Kenya's Korogocho slums children as young as 12 years are trading sex for money in a practice that has come to be known as survival sex.

Final program children and survival sex

KARATE GRANDMOTHERS OF KOROGOCHO
In 2005 grandmothers from Korogocho slums in Nairobi formed a karate group called cucu jikinge, which means grandmother’s let us defend ourselves. These Kenyan grandmothers had long been targeted by rapists, who saw them as AIDS-free prey — so they started learning karate to fight back. The group has over 100 members between the ages of 50 and 100 years old. They are taught to kick, punch and yell.
“If a young man breaks into my house and finds me sleeping, I will allow him to even enter my bed,” says Jane Muthoni one of the members of the group, “I will then stab his eyes using my fingers and hit him hard below his chin then I will gather strength to run out and scream for help.”
The grandmother’s meet every Thursday from 10 o’clock in the morning and their sessions can last until the end of the day. There is no verified data on the number of grandmothers who report rape from the slum. However the gender recovery center in Nairobi Women’s hospital, one of the referral hospitals for cases of rape and sexual abuse, 20 percent of the cases they treated in 2010 were women above 60 years.


Kungfu grandma's

Barring access to health care services to men who have sex with men only increases the prevalence of HIV in this population and in the general population. According to the Modes of Transmission survey MSMs account for 15.2% of new HIV infections. The survey revealed that MSMs are not exclusively homosexual and may even be married. A report called ‘HIV/STI prevalence and risk behavior among men who have sex with men in Nairobi, 2011 says that almost 50 percent of MSMs have been involved in a relationship with women.  Therefore the risk of wider spread of HIV beyond the MSM community is real, and this is a group that needs urgent intervention.

Men who have sex with men accessing health services in Kenya

A report by the Africa Gender and Media Initiative showed that more than 40 women living with HIV have been sterilised in Kenya between the period of 2009 and 2010 when the research was conducted. Is lack of proper and timely information from the health care providers the reason for this?

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