Surviving the client: Violence Kenya’s sex workers face every day

By  Wanja Mbuthia

Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

• Sex workers say violence is widespread, but stigma, criminalisation and costly reporting procedures keep many cases hidden.
• Funding cuts are also threatening vital health, legal and economic empowerment services for vulnerable sex workers.

The night of December 31, 2024, will forever remain scarifying and horrific for Catherine Kathambi. As the world was engulfed in celebrating the end of a year, she was staring at her death and fiercely fighting to stay alive.

“I had clocked in for my shift as a commercial sex worker with high spirits because it was a holiday and I hoped I would get a good client,” she says. Instead, the night went south when the client brutally attacked her at a club in Thika town, close to the town’s main stage, left her for dead, and disappeared into the crowds celebrating outside.

Someone found her in time and rushed her to Thika Level 5 Hospital. She survived, but with scars on her head and body that will never fade, and the hearing in her left ear gone for good. She was in a coma for three months, which meant nobody could go to the police station to file a report, so her attacker walked free while she fought to stay alive.

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Catherine is a registered commercial sex worker under the Kiambu Sex Workers Alliance (Kiaswa), the organisation that paid her medical bills and pursued her attacker once she regained consciousness and could identify him. Her case is still in court, and she is hoping for justice.

She is not alone, and by most measures, she is lucky to be alive. Barely three weeks ago, another commercial sex worker was found murdered in a lodging in the Juakali area of Eldoret City. According to Ann Nasimiyu, coordinator of the Reforming Sex Workers Union, that was the third femicide incident reported in the area in under three years.

“Unfortunately, violence in commercial sex has been normalised and that should not be the case. In July, just two months ago, we had a trending case where one of our members was assaulted and her lip bitten off by a client she had gone to a lodging with. This is just one case that went viral but we have hundreds, weekly, that go unreported,” shares Jane Mburu, a clinician and programme lead at Kiaswa.

According to Swop Ambassadors, a grassroots feminist collective by and for sex workers working to end violence against female sex workers, 27 women engaged in sex work were murdered in Nairobi in 2025 alone, while at least 345 cases of violence against them were documented across the capital. The numbers represent women whose lives were lost or harmed in silence, often because seeking help feels more dangerous than surviving the abuse.

In 2024, 170 women were killed in Kenya, a 79 per cent increase in femicide cases from 2023 and one-third of these cases were sex workers. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported 725 cases of femicide in Kenya in 2024, translating to 2.66 deaths per 100,000 women. About 75 per cent of these killings were committed by someone known to the victims.

For sex workers, the violence is compounded by laws that make reporting dangerous in the first place.

At Kiaswa's headquarters in Kiambu County, home to an accredited health facility, Jane Mburu has seen it all. Since the organisation was founded in 2019, it has secured 30 convictions out of hundreds of complaints filed, and Jane says the reporting process itself is part of the problem.

When a sex worker reports a case, she is interrogated, sometimes intrusively, before the incident is recorded in the Occurrence Book and an OB number issued. From there, she must move to the P3 form, which she has to pay to have filled in, and many cannot afford it, so the process stalls right there. Those who can afford it compile the documents and return to the same police station, where an advocacy officer reads the statements, has witnesses record theirs, and only then is the perpetrator arrested.

“In Catherine’s case the perpetrator was out freely because the only person who could record a statement was Catherine and she was in a coma for three months,” Jane explains.

"Most of the cases end up at the P3 because even with all that, the police may ask you to fuel their car so that they can go after the perpetrator. At times, we in Kiaswa end up paying for the 'mafuta' of their car for them to go after the perpetrators," she says.

Dolly Anyango, Assistant Inspector General and Director of Gender and Child Protection at the Kenya Police Service, acknowledges that there have been challenges in how the service has handled such cases in the past, but says things are changing.

"It is a work in progress, but we are working towards having a gender office in every police station in the country. Most stations in Nairobi and its environs already have these desks, and I would highly encourage any woman who experiences assault to go directly to the gender office and not the general desk. We have trained gender officers who will handle them with dignity, professionalism and care. Our gender offices operate 24 hours a day, so you can report even at night," she says.

She is confident the gender offices are helping to reduce stigma, and while not every case is reported, she says there has been an increase in reporting, arrests and arraignments.

The situation is even more complicated beyond Kenya's borders. Grace Nyarath is the project manager at the African Sex Workers Alliance (Aswa), a Pan-African organisation that amplifies the voices of sex workers on health and social justice issues across the continent. Aswa operates in 37 African countries, including around 69 sex worker-led organisations in Kenya and about 71 in Uganda, alongside 27 national-level networks and 162 member organisations, plus individual members.

Common thread

The common thread across the continent, Grace says, is criminalisation.

"When criminalisation comes in, people take advantage. We have violence and insecurity as one key outcome, where sex workers are physically, sexually and emotionally violated. We get threats and harassment, extortion even from law enforcement, and limited access to justice when violence occurs, because reports are usually dismissed or not taken seriously," she says.

That criminalisation feeds stigma and discrimination, and negative attitudes from families, communities, healthcare providers and government institutions push sex workers further into social exclusion. Research on social protection has found that most sex workers are excluded from such services altogether.

"Senegal is the only African country that has legalised sex work on paper, but they still have a lot of challenges and violations. But in other African countries, it is criminalised so this brings fear of arrest that discourages sex workers from reporting violence cases," Grace explains.

Enforcement varies widely even where sex work is technically illegal. Mozambique and Senegal permit regulated forms of it, while South Africa has maintained a blanket ban since 1957. A draft bill to decriminalise sex work in South Africa was withdrawn for redrafting in 2023, and the National Prosecuting Authority has since issued a moratorium on prosecuting sex workers while the matter awaits a decision from the Constitutional Court.

"What we really want is decriminalisation of sex work," Grace says. "It is something that has gotten a lot of backlash. A good example is South Africa, which tabled a bill to the president, and then, because it went back to the community for input, it failed to get the threshold of support it needed."

Grace also wants to see stronger protection and access to justice, so that cases reported by sex workers actually reach completion rather than stalling.

"A lot of these cases, if reported, don't go to completion," she says. "We are looking at what the gap is. Is it a problem with how the sex workers report? Is it a problem with the justice system?"

Safe and confidential reporting mechanisms matter just as much, she says. "This has been an issue, where it is not even safe to report. When the community reports, that data is not taken as serious data. The government wants its own system used, and that system is not safe either. The community feels we need to create our own system, one that is safe, but when we present that data, it is not picked up as real data."

But the organisations are facing an existential crisis. Donor funding has dried up, and the consequences are dire.

"We have run out of grants, and it's really alarming," Jane says. "This week alone, we've only been able to reach two HIV-positive cases, and those were walk-ins, because we don't have money for outreach anymore. The HIV rate is rising faster among our sex workers now that the funding has been cut."

Kiaswa covers all 12 sub-counties of Kiambu County. It is legally registered by the government and recognised by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union as a level two clinic. The organisation has registered 15,535 sex workers in its system, with Thika accounting for the highest number at 7,200, followed by Ruiru with 2,105.

Its 10 staff members include two clinicians, a mental health counsellor, a monitoring and evaluation officer, an administrator, and programme and finance staff. It runs a drop-in centre in Juja Sub-county with a clinic room, management offices, and a safe space that includes a bed and a baby cot for sex workers who are also mothers.

"We focus on three thematic areas," Jane explains. "One is biomedical, where we focus more on health. We also focus on structural intervention, where we cover advocacy, and we have economic empowerment programmes for our sex workers."

Catherine is now a staff member at Kiaswa herself, handling cleaning duties at the facility, and earns a monthly stipend that helps her get by.

On the biomedical side, Kiaswa provides HIV testing, STI treatment, reproductive health services and other care without discrimination or stigma, alongside condoms supplied by Kemsa, plus ARVs and PrEP. But the funding cuts have severely limited how much outreach it can do.

"We also offer economic empowerment programmes, because getting out of sex work is a process, since at times it becomes an addiction," Jane says.

"There was a time we had a grant and ran some economic empowerment activities, and we were able to get older sex workers off the streets. Now that we don't have grants, most of them are back on the streets."

Funding cuts

The impact of donor funding withdrawal cannot be overstated. Jane explains what happened when USAid funding was cut. A health facility, which had been operating in Kiambu, took all the data to another dispensary Kiandutu, without the sex workers' consent and when our girls went for their treatment, they were openly humiliated. That is the level of disregard we have to deal with; no respect for our data.

Even so, there have been wins. Jane recalls a case at the court in Kenol, Murang'a, where a man lured several girls to his matrimonial home and engaged in a threesome with them while his wife recorded it, then posted the video on social media, where it went viral. Through a pro bono lawyer, Kiaswa helped get both the man and his wife arrested, and they are now in prison awaiting a ruling.

To close the data gap, Aswa developed the Murder Monitoring Tool, an online platform accessible on smartphones and via the Aswa website, where sex workers can report violence in real time from wherever they are.

"With the data we've been receiving, there's an alarming rise in violence cases among sex workers across different countries," Grace says. "In a month, we get more than 100 reports through the app. But this doesn't reflect the entire sex worker movement, because some countries have challenges with internet access and how people can report. When you go to the ground, you find the real numbers are far higher than what shows up in the app."

Grace also wants sex workers included in policy conversations. "This is not a sex worker issue, it's a community issue, a whole-society issue. When I'm violated, it affects my family, and my family being affected affects another family. It's an ecosystem that needs to be addressed with everyone, not sex workers alone."

One effort trying to do that is the Feminist Opportunities Now (Fon) project, a global initiative running from 2022 to 2026 that strengthens feminist movements working to end gender-based violence (GBV). With a total budget of €14 million (Ksh1.8 billion) over four years, Fon supports feminist organisations in 10 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, offering sub-grants, long-term mentorship and tailored training. In Kenya, it supports six organisations, and its "This is Power" campaign positions grassroots feminist civil society groups as frontline drivers of systemic change. But for organisations like Kiaswa, the funding gap is already being felt acutely.

Elsewhere on the continent, the picture darkens further. In Ethiopia, Grace says, the law prohibits the very words needed to discuss the issue openly. "The sex workers here do not even identify as sex workers, so even the organisations helping them cannot state it bluntly, and the ignorance around this in such countries is high. The data we collect there has to be camouflaged so people cannot be identified and apprehended," she explains.

In Burkina Faso, political instability has made it harder for sex workers to report violence at all.

"These violence cases have now spread from sex workers themselves to every woman in and around their area, because of the political situation. Between thinking about their safety, their next meal, and what comes next, even thinking about reporting, and who to report to, becomes an issue," Grace says.

In Tanzania, sex workers' leaders have been arrested and profiled. A group of sex workers was rounded up and taken to cells but never arraigned in court, and when their leaders questioned why, they became targets themselves, with some fleeing to Kenya to seek asylum.

"If the sex workers' leaders can be hunted down like that, what of the sex workers at the grassroots? Are they even able to report cases?" Grace asks.

Aswa has sub-granted three countries, Kenya through Swop Ambassadors, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, to work on GBV. It convened 16 sex workers from the three countries and trained them to use the Murder Monitoring Tool, and reporting numbers under the tool have since risen. But resources remain scarce.

In Ethiopia, where sex workers cannot be identified as such in the data, the information gathered was instead used to lobby stakeholders on reducing violence against women more broadly. "Some of the objectives were achieved, like sitting them down and having that discussion, and getting to hear their views," Grace says.

Public failure

Veronica Achieng*, a sex worker and paralegal in Nairobi, blames the public for failing to defend sex workers and hold their attackers accountable.

"We know that not protecting sex work leaves abusers free to harm without consequence. We also know what stops this. When survivors are accompanied by paralegals, when hospitals provide care without judgment, when lawyers are present and witnesses are protected, cases move. Files are not lost, arrests happen, convictions happen, and violence is deterred," she says.

She is also critical of the Presidential Task Force on GBV and Femicide, which she says has failed to act on information sex workers submitted to it a year ago.

"The presidential task force was established to address these patterns of violence. Sex workers submitted testimonies, data and lived experiences. One year later, the task force report remains unpublished. This silence is a broken promise to women in Kenya, the public, and the families of those killed. A national response to violence that excludes sex workers is neither inclusive nor fair," she says.

Responding to what the government is doing to protect sex workers, Cabinet Secretary for Gender, Culture and Children Services Hannah Wendot Cheptumo says Kenya is stepping up its efforts to eliminate femicide and all forms of GBV.

"These acts are barbaric. They violate not only the law but also the conscience of our society. As the CS for Gender, I state unequivocally that this country shall adopt zero tolerance for femicide and all forms of GBV. It is just a matter of time," she says.

Cheptumo points to the expansion of safe houses, one-stop crisis centres and rehabilitation services for survivors, as well as the strengthening of mandatory reporting protocols for health workers, teachers and community leaders, as concrete steps being taken. The ministry is also rolling out nationwide awareness campaigns aimed at addressing harmful social norms while promoting responsible parenting.

"The protection of women, girls and all vulnerable persons from GBV and femicide remains a national priority requiring decisive and collective intervention," she adds.

Many sex workers remain hopeful that this promise will one day become reality. For Catherine Kathambi, that hope is fragile. She survived the attack that left her scarred, partially deaf, and forever changed. She is one of the lucky ones, alive, with an organisation that stood by her and a case still moving through the courts. But the scars on her head and body are permanent, a lasting reminder of a violence that society has come to treat as just part of the job.