Kenyan Women Hit Men With Sex Ban Over Violence

Women's activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Women's Development Organisation coalition said they also plan on paying prostitutes to join their strike.

The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.

They say they want to avoid a repeat of the violence which convulsed the country after the late-2007 elections.

Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers, one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

She said the campaign would start from her bedroom and that emissaries had been sent to the two leaders' wives, Ida Odinga and Lucy Kibaki, urging them to join in and lead from the front.

"Even commercial sex workers should join in the campaign which is so vital to the country," Nyaundi told BBC's Focus on Africa.

"Great decisions are made during pillow talk, so we are asking the two ladies at that intimate moment to ask their husbands: 'Darling can you do something for Kenya?'"

The campaign is being backed by several other lobby groups, including the Caucus for Women's Leadership and Maendeleo ya Wanawake - a nationwide network of women's groups in rural Kenya.

Kibaki and Odinga agreed to share power last year to end post-election violence, which had left some 1,500 people dead and forced 300,000 from their homes.

 � Copyright 2004-2015 The News Vault. All rights reserved.