The Africa Women and Child Feature Services (AWCFS) pilot intervention in Samburu County sought to understand how socio-cultural norms and harmful practices, unequal power relations, and patriarchy make women and girls vulnerable to various forms of violence such as child marriage, FGM, Girl-Beading, and battering, and how violence affects their empowerment and realisation of individual human rights. The pilot involved organising community focus group discussions to establish the influence of gender norms on cattle rustling, a harmful cultural practice and a major source of conflict and insecurity in Samburu, Laikipia and Baringo counties; and secondly how patriarchy normalises and enhances this form of violence. Two key lessons emerged from this pilot intervention: first, women’s collective action is an important currency in conflict management and can determine how formal and informal structures, channels, movements, and actions engage to either sustain conflict or achieve peace. Second, the design of gender mainstreaming and VAWG programmatic interventions in these settings needs to take into consideration silence and concealment as social norms preserved by  communities.