UN condemns the murder of Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei

The United Nations is mourning the loss of 33-year-old Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who died Thursday in a hospital in Eldoret, Kenya, just days after her boyfriend set her on fire.

The 33-year-old marathoner, who lived and trained in north-west Kenya, competed at the recent Paris Olympics.

On Sunday, during an argument, Cheptegei’s boyfriend doused her with gasoline and set her on fire, causing burns to 80 percent of her body, according to media reports.

A global problem

“Today we join the Population Fund of the United Nations (UNFPA) already UN Women “to strongly condemn his violent murder,” the spokesman for the National Security Agency told reporters in New York on Thursday. Secretary General of the UN, Stéphane Dujarric.

Dujarric used his daily press conference to draw attention to the “tragic death,” saying it “illustrates a much larger problem that is too often ignored.”

The spokesperson said gender-based violence is one of the most common human rights violations in the world and should be treated as such.

Citing figures from UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that Every 11 minutes a woman or girl is killed by her partner or a family member somewhere in the world.

“We, of course, think that the real figures are much higher,” he added.

“So, if this briefing lasts half an hour, on average, three women have become victims of femicide while we are speaking.”

“As the Secretary General once said, We continue to live in a male-dominated culture that leaves women vulnerable by denying them equal dignity and rights.. We all pay the price: our societies are less peaceful, our economies less prosperous and our world less just. But another world is possible,” he concluded.

Ending gender violence

Ugandan and Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Winnie Byanyima, took to social media to express her condemnation, and urged everyone to “stand up and end gender-based violence”, stating that “silence is complicity”.

While mourning the loss of “our national Olympic star,” I also condemn “the culture of male domination and the tolerance of violence against women, men and children.”

In another post, Byanyima recalled that The athlete ran “to feed her children, take care of her parents and pay for her nephews’ education”.