"The officers used brutal force to arrest us. Out of eight human rights defenders arrested, I was the only woman. One of the arresting officers sexually molested me by grabbing my private parts before shoving me into a waiting truck full of anti-riot police who had been brought to disrupt our peaceful protest. We were later released without charge."

Unable to raise bail, four human rights defenders were imprisoned for protesting at a local nursing home about the ‘unacceptably high maternal mortality rates.’ Ruth Mumbi shares her story, noting that she was jailed ‘not because I was a criminal but because I had stood my grounds for peoples and women’s right to healthcare.’

Ruth Mumbi – of Bunge la Mwananchi and Kiamaiko Young Women in Kenya – writes of Lillian, who died while giving birth. She was, Mumbi holds, ‘a young, promising sister who could have had a brighter future if she had an opportunity to pursue her education’. Mumbi asks why her government can find 40 million shillings of taxpayers’ money to send ‘Al Faisal, who was disowned by other countries, back to Jamaica instead of providing for citizens, especially women who badly need reproductive health services.’ She asserts that many deaths as a result of childbirth in Kenya ‘are preventable if correct measures are taken and services brought closer to the people’.