The authorities have yet to commit to help abused women obtain timely medical treatment, seek protection in shelters or even access police and legal services, Ms. Odhiambo said, urging top officials to regularly hold government institutions accountable on the progress they are making.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “the legal responsibility lies with the Kenyan government to prevent the killing, the rape, the beating and the harassment of women.”
Abigail Arunga, who regularly writes about domestic and sexual violence as a columnist with Kenya’s leading newspaper, Daily Nation, said media coverage must also stop blaming women for their own deaths.
“We don’t die because we walked in a dark alley,” she said. “We die because a man killed us.” Ms. Arunga added: “We need to frame the issue not as a woman’s problem or a societal problem. It’s a man’s problem.”
On Friday, thousands of Kenyan athletes and coaches alongside residents of the town of Eldoret in western Kenya joined in a procession remembering Ms. Tirop. Some carried a banner with her photograph and a call to “End Gender-Based Violence.”
Ms. Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich, is being held as investigations continue and his fitness to stand trial is assessed. The police have given no motive, and it appears Ms. Tirop had never filed a complaint against him.
On Saturday, on what would have been her 26th birthday, Ms. Tirop was laid to rest in a village in Nandi County along the Rift Valley. Hundreds of mourners, including officials and famous runners, tossed red and yellow rose petals on her white coffin, some crying at the loss.
“I am standing here because something has to be done,” Violah Cheptoo Lagat, a Kenyan athlete, said at the funeral. “We are putting our sister to rest, but we are here to also raise our voices. We need to be heard as women. We need people to understand we are not tools. We are not anyone’s property.”
