The Penal Code (Amendment) Bill 2026: What It Says, What It Doesn't, and What Still Must Change

In January 2024, between 10,000 and 20,000 Kenyans marched in Nairobi and ten other counties demanding that the government name what was happening to women. That naming — legal, statutory, permanent — is what the Penal Code (Amendment) Bill 2026 attempts to provide. It is the first time in Kenya's history that femicide has a legal definition on the table in the National Assembly.

What the Bill Says

The bill introduces femicide as a standalone criminal offence in the Kenyan Penal Code — distinct from general homicide, manslaughter, and murder. For the first time, a court would have the statutory language to name a killing as femicide, to classify it in sentencing, and to record it as such in the national crime statistics.

The companion Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Bill 2026 addresses how femicide cases would be investigated and prosecuted — requiring that investigators document the gender-based nature of a killing and that prosecutors consider that context in charging decisions.

Both bills emerged directly from the 42-member Presidential Technical Working Group on GBV and Femicide established by President Ruto in January 2025, tasked with proposing legislative reform after the January 2024 protests. The TWG recommended: declare GBV a national crisis; create femicide as a standalone offence; establish a National GBV and Femicide Response Fund; build a National GBV Management Information System; create a Femicide Observatory; set mandatory minimum sentences for sexual offences.

What It Doesn't Say

The bill creates a legal name. It does not fix the systems that ensure cases never reach a courtroom to be named.

• No provision on the P3 form fee — women are still charged ~KES 1,500 for the medical evidence required to prosecute their own case.
• No National GBV and Femicide Response Fund — the TWG recommendation did not make it into legislation.
• No National GBV Management Information System — the government stopped publishing consolidated femicide data in March 2025. The bill does not mandate that it resume.
• No Femicide Observatory — the independent monitoring body recommended by the TWG is absent.
• No mandatory minimum sentences — recommended by the TWG, not included.
• No ODPP resourcing mandate — the Director of Public Prosecutions still has full discretion to decline prosecution on resource grounds.

“Femicide cases are treated as murder and that is where the problem stems from — you do not find any because femicide is treated as murder.”

AIG Donatha Kiplagat, Kenya National Police Service, on record

That quote describes the problem the bill would solve — at the level of legal classification. But legal classification alone does not move a case. A woman still has to navigate 11 separate institutions, retell her account from scratch at each one, pay KES 1,500 for a P3 form, and wait for an ODPP with finite resources to decide whether her case is worth pursuing. The bill changes what the death is called at the end of that process. It does not change whether she survives the process.

What Still Must Change

• P3 form fee elimination — explicit no-fee mandate with hospital enforcement obligation
• ODPP dedicated femicide unit — resourced and accountable
• National GBV Management Information System — real-time, public, mandatory reporting
• Femicide Observatory — independent from government, funded from the GBV Response Fund
• National GBV and Femicide Response Fund — statutory, not discretionary
• Government data publication — the March 2025 suppression of consolidated data must be reversed by law