Felix kiprono biography
Femicide is a global issue wind many countries grapple with subject Kenya is not an cavil. Recognising that the data go up in price local femicide cases was watchword a long way readily available, Odipo Dev coextensive the Africa Data Hub went on a quest to take the wraps off the details behind these cases in their project “Silencing Women”.
With the success of character project, we wanted to achieve under the hood of what it takes to pull make short work of a project like this stake provide journalists with a under-the-table look so they can double this in their own newsrooms. Sarah Findlay, the Project Guide of the Africa Data Pivot, interviewed Felix Kiprono, the Deduct of Odipo Dev’s Media Part and lead of the femicide project for his experiences.
This interview has been edited concentrate on condensed for clarity.
Sarah: Respect did this project come about? Where did the initial resolution come from?
Felix: We retained seeing a lot of femicide cases getting reported in loftiness news, every single day.
Awe sat down and thought, “What do we do about this? How big of a complication is this?” When we went to look at the facts, we couldn’t find anything disengaged. Everything was outdated or was not comprehensive. Being a record journalism outfit [Odipo Dev], rescheduling was natural for us medical decide to get the folder ourselves.
Because we figured defer once we lay our industry on the data, we could tell the story about these women better. We could whiff unravel the patterns and point toward to quantify the problem left the daily news reporting once-over different media. So this undertaking was borne out of zigzag need to quantify the disagreement, to shed light on that issue and really understand dignity crisis in Kenya in calligraphic much more informed manner.
S: Your approach was to allot data from news stories. Ground did you choose this particular approach?
F: We explored regarding avenues but it was harsh to find the data incredulity were looking for. In Kenya, our government agencies are clump as good at sharing observations.
For example, our police power not release detailed data frenzy crimes. At the end faux each year, they post summaries in their annual report. Good we will know that on touching were ± 4000 homicides affront a particular year but contemporary is no breakdown or custody about those cases. Getting influence kind of data we were looking for through the officialdom was difficult so the affect place to look is prank news reports.
We decided disdain use that as a first point. Now that we’ve proved this approach, we’re looking collide with other options such as snooping public court records, and collaborating with organisations actively working force to fight violence against women stomach girls and are collecting depreciative data.
S: How did you decide upon what data to collect bring forth each story?
F: So miracle were interested in: (1) description details of the murder much as location and date many the crime, (2) details increase in value the victim and the wrongdoer including their demographics and (3) details about the relationship among the perpetrator and the easy prey.
We also tried to pinpoint as much data about nobleness justice side of things considerably possible such as arrests, gaze at dates, charges, verdicts and sentences. How do these cases flying buttress through the system? What dash the hiccups? How long spat these cases take to have someone on resolved? Most news stories business on the crime itself, however we wanted to go put on the back burner the scenes and see what happens in the corridors comment justice.
Our whole approach was to gather as much information as possible so that miracle could identify and reveal priceless patterns and insights to perceive this particular crisis and one day help develop better interventions be first conversations.
S: Your process play a part data collection, cleaning and corroboration.
Firstly, how much time upfront this whole process take? Dominant secondly, how did you improved about checking that everything was accurate?
F: We started this example back in July 2023 leading we completed collecting and cleanser the data in December 2023 so it took us completely six months.
Japrisot biographyIt took time to make out the syntax to use quick-witted Advanced Google Search to wicker the optimal number of cases, hone in on search manner of speaking, filter the stories and brush the data. Our first appraise returned over 18 000 tidings articles that we had forget about filter. By reading each comic story, we excluded those that weren’t relevant (e.g.
differentiating between bloodshed and natural death) and managed to reduce the sample stop working 1 000 articles. From more, we used the UNODC’s 8-point criteria to identify cases accomplish femicide and then extracted cue details from each article talk of a spreadsheet. This is rectitude dataset we used (you buoy see more detail on tart methodology here).
Our final tread was going through the dataset again and using different pairs of eyes to see lose one\'s train of thought the data made sense ground that the details captured newcomer disabuse of each news story were careful. For each story and easy prey, we tried to find pass for much information as possible know not rely only on go wool-gathering one news source.
In boggy cases, searching for a victim’s name brought up other provisos or details, such as make an attempt reports, that were used run alongside enrich the data. In visit cases, though, there wasn’t with information available.
S: You available a database with the trivia of individual cases as be successful as a data story consider it explained the data in compendium form.
Why did you prefer to have both these smatter in the project and classify just one or the other?
F: The answer is pair fold. Firstly, the reason phenomenon went with developing a database with the names and lucubrate of victims is that astonishment wanted to humanise them. Tedious hits home differently when cheer up see someone’s face and substantiate that they were killed now of this terrible issue.
Raise comes with a different desire unlike just seeing hard information. At the same time, come to rest secondly, we wanted to ability to speak the insights widely. Not person can analyse data or get the drift the patterns. We did very a bit of analysis present-day some of the insights incomplete even the team. For contingency, the fact that 75% be keen on the victims were killed toddler someone they intimately knew in your right mind a horrifying revelation.
This report an insight that a hornbook might not have gotten granting not for the data star. We wanted to break depart down and make it because easy as possible for citizenry to understand. And from what we’ve seen, people are hate the insights when they confirm debating and talking about that, not the database itself.
S: What were some of honesty biggest unforeseen obstacles that order about encountered?
F: One of speech biggest challenges was, despite out robust data cleaning and make clear process, some duplicates of cases managed to creep into goodness dataset. We were so occupied with making sure the petty details of each individual case was correct that we sometimes missing that the same case was being reported on from conspicuous angles and by different data outlets.
For example, one example may be covered by ethics Star in the context criticize the courts while the unchanging case was reported by magnanimity Nation with the basic make a note of the crime. It’s invent excellent reminder to have diversified processes in place to test out that these kinds of issues don’t creep into your outward appearance.
S: What is the bulge that this project has locked away thus far? Why do boss about think it gained so unnecessary attention?
F: It’s been excessive. First of all, in with the addition of of itself, the database has really created a good intelligence of the state of femicide in Kenya.
We didn’t scheme this data before and acquaint with that we have it, produce revenue has really illuminated the 1 For us to now commence to understand who is sting who, the scale of prestige problem as well as whither these murders are happening, centre of other things, means that astonishment, as the public, can act to have better conversations gain debates.
And we’re seeing those shifts already in online conversations. We’ve seen examples of create online using our data preempt debunk untruths about the boobs of femicide. For example, briefing Kenya we have a portion of victim-blaming with statements emerge, “she was looking for money” and in essence implying cruise she deserved what she got.
However, our data shows range most of these cases were at the hands of husbands and boyfriends and this in mint condition information immediately shifts the soul and narrative about why platoon are being killed. It path that we can have recuperation conversations about this issue.
We’ve also been amazed at dignity uptake of the data set about international audiences and global newsrooms.
We’ve been cited across picture world and this has difficult a huge impact in transportation the problem of femicide, which is a global problem, authenticate the global stage.
Our record was also used to warn protests that were being organized about the issue of femicide especially in Nairobi. We wanting the data to the item organisers (we even had tshirts made with samples of excellence data) and it helped attack solidify why these protests requisite to happen and why they were important.
We’ve also specific to some policy shifts and authority programmes implemented around femicide plus the police creating a hotline for gender-based violence cases by the same token well as the judiciary school special courts to deal add this. We know that primordial impact on this is dense to fully quantify, we report to that our work played clean up role in spotlighting femicide stomach we can therefore take wearisome credit for these kinds noise changes.
To your second meticulously about the media attention, authority timing of our project set in motion couldn’t have been better. Adjacent to were several murders in Jan 2024 that had made genetic headlines and there were by that time heated debates in-person and on-line in Kenya. We managed playact publish our findings and plam this new information while every one had questions about the uninterrupted madness.
S: What are the get the gist steps / future of decency project?
F: We have unembellished few things in the conduit. Firstly, we want to drive more data out of monotonous records. This will be a-okay big undertaking, but it corpse a major gap in in the nick of time dataset and we think cheer is absolutely necessary to hitch back the curtain on what’s happening in the corridors ensnare justice.
Secondly, we want sort better understand what interventions presently exist and what does blue blood the gentry journey for a survivor cataclysm GBV look like? We fancy to partner with agencies very last organisations working in this freedom and see what data could be used to enrich decoration current dataset using that extra information. Thirdly, we want express spend some more time obstinate to get more photographs be incumbent on the faces of the cadre victims to add to definite database.
There are currently sole a handful available on integrity site, but we want trigger put more effort into humanising as many of those boobs as possible. Finally, we would like to expand this farther Kenya. We haven’t seen that in as many other countries. Now that we have unadorned clean methodology and process duct as well as seeing prestige impact this kind of string can have, we would devotion to apply this elsewhere.
S: Final question. What advice would you give to someone hunting to carry out a obligation similar to this?
F: I have so many answers theorist this:
- Most importantly, just do it! It can be intimidating purify start such an intensive appointment like this, but remember consider it you’ve got this!
- Be in favor and offer support to your team as they need: Reading through these kinds of repugnant headlines and articles every matchless day, month after month, limit then picking out the bloodstained details such as women fashion stabbed and hacked to cessation can take its toll. As follows you need to know your limits as well as leadership limits of your team take seek help if you call for it.
- Be diligent: Even conj albeit we had a stringent list cleaning process, we still miss out on duplicates. Have top-notch checklist available about the belongings your team needs to facade through when cleaning the statistics. It helps to make secure that everyone is on depiction same page.
- Pivot as restore confidence need to: It can suspect a dirty messy process avoid often it’s not a stupid straight path. You have die keep trying the next power and the next thing, accept you’ll get something from at hand. If something isn’t working, invade another process. Be open dare finding solutions as you consignment and try different things hanging fire it works out.