Archive for July, 2008
Insecurity Heightens Poverty in Northwest Kenya
 Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN  |
| Residents often have to rely on police reservists and have organised local security to safeguard their livestock |
LODWAR, 29 July 2008 (IRIN) – John Lochimoe used to own several heads of cattle that his grandfather left him, until raiders from the neighbouring Pokot District of northwestern Kenya took the animals.
“All the cows my grandfather left me have been stolen, driving me deeper into poverty,” he said. Today, Lochimoe, a single parent of two, who also cares for his mother and mother-in-law, can hardly cope thanks to the insecurity that has robbed him of his livelihood.
“At night the dogs bark all the time and people are always on the look-out. It seems as if the peace and reconciliation efforts do not work,” Lochimoe, a former teacher living in Oropoi village, Turkana North District, said.
Like Oropoi, many areas of the mainly arid northern Kenya experience resource-based conflicts, livestock theft and a lack of access to infrastructure such as roads, schools, communication and health facilities.
The situation has particularly affected the pastoralist communities that dominate the region. The major causes of conflict include cattle-rustling, proliferation of illicit arms, inadequate policing, and competition over control and access to natural resources, according to a report by the NGO Practical Action Eastern Africa report. The NGO implements peace programmes in northern Kenya.
“The pastoralists cannot access water and pasture because of the insecurity,” Turkana Central District Commissioner George Ayonga said. Residents rely on seasonal rivers and water pans, and rising fuel costs have also reduced access to motorised water schemes.
The insecurity, he added, had caused population displacement, especially in areas such as Lokori and Lomelo, south of the main town of Lodwar.
To cope, residents often have to rely on police reservists and have organised local security to safeguard their livestock. Boys, some as young as 14, carry guns while herding livestock.
According to a drought bulletin for Turkana, June was particularly bad for conflicts in all cross-border zones of Turkana North, Central and South districts.
The problem was attributed to resource-based battles after the failure of the long rains. The region borders Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and the areas of Baringo, Marsabit, Samburu and West Pokot in Kenya.
The bulletin recommended strengthening early warning and rapid response systems, in addition to holding peace meetings and encouraging dialogue.
Health issues
According to Sarah Wanaswa of the Oropoi dispensary, many cases of assault and gunshot wounds were reported during the months of peak conflict. “When there are no peace and reconciliation efforts, there are also many raids,” Wanaswa said. “We get targeted more when the herds move.”
Apart from insecurity, the region experiences other health problems. Low awareness of personal hygiene, she added, had also often led residents to suffer preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, skin and eye infections. The dispensary, which treats between seven and 10 people each day, relies on supplies flown in by the government and NGOs.
 Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN  |
| John Ichom, a teacher at a Catholic mission nursery school in the Kaeris area of the Turkana North district. |
The other problem was low latrine coverage. “Most people use the ‘cat method’,” she said. “Those [residents] who are mobile see no value in erecting latrines which they will not use for long.
“Some say the soil is rocky and are therefore reluctant to dig latrines,” she said. “Waste disposal depends on personal knowledge.”
Wanaswa said community health workers were conducting outreach services. “We are educating the people on the consequences of not having a toilet.”
The dispensary at Oropoi also lacks HIV prevention services while most women deliver at home, seeking medical help only in case of complications. At the same time, the population movements had also contributed to low immunisation coverage of childhood diseases such as measles.
Education
While enrolment in nursery and primary schools is high, transition to secondary education is low due to the tradition of early marriage for girls and boys dropping out of school to take care of livestock.
High enrolment in the lower classes is boosted by the school-feeding programmes. “For most children this is their main meal,” John Ichom, a teacher at a Catholic mission nursery school in the Kaeris area of the Turkana North district, said.
There are few boarding schools and in some, the classrooms double up as dormitories at night.
“It is as if we are not part of Kenya,” said a resident of the lack of infrastructure and rampant insecurity, which had also restricted access to key markets within and outside the region.
In a bid to develop the northern regions, the government has established a ministry of state for the development of northern Kenya and other arid lands.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Kiambaa IDPs Still Afraid to Return Home
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Stephen Kariuki Gichuhi, chairman of the IDPs who have sought shelter at the Ngecha All Nations Gospel Church in Limuru |
LIMURU, 30 July 2008 (IRIN) – Hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled Kenya’s Rift Valley Province after their church was set ablaze in January’s post-election violence, burning to death some of their relatives, have yet to return home.
“We are tired of staying in an IDP camp; many of us are not used to just sitting idle and living in tents such as these,” Stephen Kariuki Gichuhi, chairman of the IDPs who sought shelter at the Ngecha All Nations Gospel Church in Limuru, Kiambu District, told IRIN on 30 July.
Gichuhi is one of the IDPs from Kiambaa farm in Eldoret, which witnessed the worst scenes of violence. The IDPs have since lived in church compounds or with relatives, despite a government directive in May to all IDPs to return home.
On 5 May, the ministry of special programmes launched “Operation Rudi Nyumbani” (Return Home), targeting at least 158,000 IDPs in camps across the country. On 20 July, it launched the reconstruction phase of the programme, after some 85,000 IDPs left the camps.
“I had lived in Kiambaa for 40 years, I had a thriving bee-keeping business and managed a tree nursery with my family,” Gichuhi said. “[But] I am not going back because the people who burnt the church are still there, the people who killed my child and my father are still there.”
At least 30 people died and dozens more injured – most of them children and women – when arsonists set ablaze the church on 1 January, at the beginning of violence that later spread across Kenya in protest against the outcome of the 27 December presidential elections.
Most of the 260 IDPs from Kiambaa need help but still insist they cannot return home, according to Daniel Kihuha, the pastor. “The IDPs are in dire need of food, medical services, sanitation and firewood for cooking.”
The IDPs were sharing a limited number of toilets, which were also being used by the regular church congregation, while some of their tents were more than three months old and needed replacement.
“The nearest public health centre is about 4km away,” Kihuha said. “Water facilities at the church camp are overstretched; we have had at least two deaths recently.”
The children had no nursery facility but the older ones were learning in nearby schools.
“Despite earlier forms of assistance, such as tents from the UN and food and medical aid from the Kenya Red Cross, the IDPs feel abandoned,” Kihuha said.
Only a week’s worth of food stocks was available at the church camp, he said. The IDPs also had to contend with cold weather, which is set to continue into August, according to the Kenya Meteorological Department.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Kenya), in a 3-9 July update, said 59,666 IDPs remained in 89 IDP camps across Kenya, while 98,289 others had been registered in 134 transit sites across the country.
Government figures indicate that 212,590 IDPs have returned to areas from where they were displaced.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Connection Between High Food Prices and Grand Corruption
Bunge La Mwananchi held a forum on Wednesday 2nd July, 2008 at Professional Centre Nairobi, between 1.00 pm and 5.00 pm. as part of its civil awareness initiative to rally people around issues that affect them. Bunge La Mwananchi had in the recent past organised an activity in which Kenyans held street protest to complain against the high food prices. There has been a continuing debate amongst grass root Kenyans as to what is truly causing the high food prices. Theories proposed have ranged from there having been poor harvests due to lack of rain; and the after-effect of the post-elections violence and displacement; the disappearance of traditional foods from the farmers’ options of crops and that the food crisis is a global problem.
While there may be some truth in these factors, Kenyans nevertheless see a clear link between the high food prices and corruption; where they define corruption as bad leadership, lack of ethics in governance and mismanagement of resources. To explore this more, the topic of discussion of the forum was “The connection between high food prices and grand corruption”. Attendance was estimated at 230 people drawn from grass-root leaders of CBOs, slum groups and the general public.
Key issues arising from the discussions:
1. It was noted that corruption is not a new phenomenon. Unfortunately, due to its having been around for a while, it is increasingly being treated as a normal issue despite where it is driving the country. It is important that a firm and long lasting solution is explored and adopted concerning how we treat corruption as a country.
2. It was cautioned that civic vigilance must be heightened so that political leaders are held accountable to their constituents.
3. It was noted that through corruption, Kenya has lost a lot of funds. In Goldenberg we lost K.Shs. 140 billion, an additional K.Shs. 300 billion was identified as lost by the Kroll report and a further K.Shs. 120 billion in the Anglo-Leasing scandal; yet this is by no means an exhaustive list. Looking at these collosal figures, it is unclear why our leaders are seeking aid at all. It was suggested that as we deal with current corruption scandals, perpetrators of past scandals are still with us and should be held to answer. It is time to hold the different political regimes accountable in recovering the lost funds.
4. Government’s mandate is to provide security against threats for its citizen; when a government cannot ensure security against all forms of threat it does not business of being in power. Food insecurity has endangered many lives in Kenya especially West and East Pokot where our people are feeding wild carcases and rats; this leads us to wonder, do we have a government?
5. In our history we have had subtle corruption scandals that have somehow slipped under the public radar. For example the process of government tendering seems to belong to an exclusive clique that does business with the government, since no Wananchi ever qualify. Even in employment, people in the public service who have attained retirement age are still holding on to jobs as their contracts and continuously renewed. Further, in a nation where there is a high level of unemployment it is corruption for there to be individuals that hold more than one salaried position.
6. According to Marsgroup Kenya, a research firm, in a publication in the Nairobi Star, there are many government resource wastages. For example, the Ministry of Finance has been allocated K.Shs. 500,000/= per day for hospitality and as much as K.Shs. 12 million is spent every public holiday in flying the president’s speech to different parts of Kenya – why not fax it as it is usually a 3 pg document? They also point out that the money is extravagantly spent on foreign trips, servicing government vehicles and paying for office space that is not used. If that money was well managed we would have surplus funds that would be used as a safety net against high food prices.
7. The debate on corruption is now focussed on the Grand Regency. However, the crusaders are themselves suspect e.g. for having been involved in past corruption – is this a cover up? MPs debate on Grand Regency comes close on the heels of their refusal to pay tax. Refusal to pay tax is also corruption. So is the debate a decoy from the taxation issue?
8. Before the Grand Regency there were issues that concerned Kenyans e.g. resettlement and compensation of IDPs, minimum wage increase demand, high food prices. While these issues touched on Wananchi directly and we expected our MPs and civil society leadership to fight for us, we did not see them address these issues with as much passion as the Grand Regency issue. Although Grand Regency scandal is not acceptable, why didn’t our MPs and Civil Society leaders fight as passionately on the Mwananchi issues? At the reading of the budget, Kenyans were promised that the moves recommended by the finance minister would cause prices on rice and wheat to fall. The situation on the ground is starkly different.
9. It was noted that the Grand Regency scam is not the first in which Kimunya has been implicated. There was the De La Rue tender, the continued payment of the Anglo leasing promissory note, Safaricom IPO’s management, Mobitelea (swindled cash from the public). So in dealing with Grand Regency, the above context should form a consideration.
10. The minister of agriculture promised having taken steps to bring down the price of fertiliser but this is yet to be done. Why?
11. There is money the government set aside for the resettlement of IDPs and their compensation fund but it is not clear who is managing the fund and the amount of it. It could well be the next scandal we have to deal with.
12. There’s been a long standing project for rural electrification. The recent introduction of a standing charge of 120/= is a scam. How can people who cannot afford to live on 1$ (a dollar) a day be expected to pay simply for being hooked up to the grid? They thought it was a relief and now it is an additional a liability. If 1,000,000 houses pay the standing charge alone, then there is a cool 120,000,000/= to be made. If not properly scrutinised it has the makings of another grand scandal.
13. It is not clear why the Ndungu land report has not been implemented by successive regimes. Is it because the report implicated the powerful individuals and successive regimes haven’t had nerve to take them on? Isn’t this abetting past corrupt land deals to subsist a day longer with each passing day that the report remains merely a report?
14. In the peace accord, the fourth agenda was to do with land, unemployment, poverty, issues of resource and redistribution of wealth. If the politicians move on and forget about agenda four, that is corruption.
15. Section 25(a) and 56(b) of the Kenya Anti Corruption Authority and Economic Crimes Act are sections of the law that perpetuate impunity by freeing people implicated in corruption. If the politicians were serious with fighting corruption how did this section get into our laws?
Resolutions:
1. Kibaki must stick to what he said at his swearing in ceremony in 2003: “that corruption shall cease to be our way of life”. He should do that by eliminating all people reasonably suspected of corruption from his government and prosecuting those against whom evidence of corruption is compiled. The buck stops with him.
2. The politicians who are mentioned in past corruption such as YK92, Land grabbing, Anglo Leasing, Kenren fertilizers among others and leading in the protest against the Kimunya Grand Regency saga must stay warned that they are also on line.
3. Raila is a recent victim of corruption (flawed election) and therefore must be give leadership in ensuring that the fight against corruption is won. Raila has interest for presidency 2012 and must start now to fight corruption and impunity exercised by the powerful individuals in our society and not wait for campaign trails to make pledges.
4. While a commission of inquiry would be due process in investigating Kimunya and rooting out corruption from the treasury, from Kenyans’ past experience with previous inquiries we do not have faith in the process and have misgivings that the commission could be used to sanitize Kimunya and return him back as Minister of Finance.
5. Ndungu land report should be made public and its recommendations implemented. There are people who looted land and made millions of Kenyans landless and they must be held accountable to return the land so that we can resettle the IDPs, squatters and landless Kenyans.
6. The laws that support impunity should be deleted from our law especially section 25(a) and 56(b) of the Anti Corruption and Economic crime Act.
Contact:
Bunge la Mwananchi
Email: http://www.bulamwa.co.ke
tel. +254 720 451 235
Investigate “torture” in Mt Elgon Operation, Kenya Govt Urged
 Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN |
| People displaced by the conflict in Mt Elgon are slowly returning home. HRW says the government must investigate claims of torture |
NAIROBI, 28 July 2008 (IRIN) – A public inquiry should be set up into “torture and war crimes” committed by the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SLDF) militia and the military in Mt Elgon District, human rights activists said.
“We need an independent civilian inspectorate of the police and military … to restore trust in the security forces,” Ben Rawlence of Human Rights Watch (HRW) Africa Division said in Nairobi at the launch of a report, All the Men Have Gone: War Crimes in Kenya’s Mt Elgon District.
The report documents two years of “abuses” by both the SLDF and security forces. The SLDF, it alleges, were responsible for killing at least 600 people, terrorising thousands and torturing hundreds since 2006.
The police, paramilitary and military, on the other hand, are alleged to have tortured hundreds of men detained in mass round-ups since March in response to the militia activities.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe refuted the claims, saying the Kenyan police had followed international practice while performing their duties in the district.
“We have done our own investigations [on the allegations] and will be releasing a comprehensive report in due course,” he told IRIN, describing the reports as “very inaccurate and far-fetched”.
Blaming both the SLDF and government security forces for serious human rights abuses, the report said: “The Kenyan government has a responsibility to promptly and impartially investigate and prosecute the individuals responsible for these crimes.”
“This is not an acceptable way of dealing with an insurgency … It should be within the law,” Rawlence said. The SLDF was formed in 2006 to seek redress for alleged injustices during land distribution in a settlement scheme known as Chebyuk, with the conflict pitting two main clans of the Sabaot against each other.
At least 37 people have “disappeared” after being taken into custody by security forces, according to the human rights group, and residents had remained wary of retributions from SLDF militias.
“The military and the police have a responsibility to protect the people from any regrouping by the SLDF,” HRW said.
HRW’s Africa director, Georgette Gagnon, said the “successful” operation to tackle the rebellion in Mt Elgon had come at a terrible cost.
The group called on foreign governments providing military aid and other assistance to Kenyan security forces to review that support in light of the mounting evidence of torture.
“Right now there is calm in Mt Elgon; people are pleased with what the military is doing but not the impact of the first three weeks of the [military] intervention,” Job Bwonya, executive director of the Western Kenya Human Rights Watch, said.
“The government should also come up with a land policy to prevent further suffering of the people of Mt Elgon,” Tiger Wanyanja, a human rights activist, said.
Hassan Omar Hassan, a commissioner with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights called for a “stop to the strategy of intimidation of humanitarian groups” working in the district.
On 21 July, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières said its staff had been stopped at roadblocks and prevented by local authorities from providing medical assistance to civilians in the district.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Cholera Outbreaks in W. Kenya Blamed on Contaminated Water
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Drinking contaminated water is one of the main causes of cholera |
NAIROBI, 29 July 2008 (IRIN) – Recurrent outbreaks of cholera in the western province of Nyanza are caused by widespread water contamination, including seepage from latrines, health officials said.
“The major contributor to the recent outbreaks in the area was unsafe water,” Shahnaaz Sharif, the Senior Deputy Director of Medical Services in Kenya’s health ministry, said. “In Kisumu, many wells are built near the latrine; eventually the sewage seeps into the wells.”
The high water table in the area was a contributing factor, Sharif said. Tests done on water samples from Kisumu and Nyando, two of the most affected districts in the province, indicated that 75 percent of sources were contaminated.
“People need to be made aware of water safety, by fetching their water from a safe source and boiling it,” Moses Atuko, the emergency health manager at the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) said. At least 80 percent of cholera transmissions are attributed to a lack of access to safe water.
“Sanitation is health; you have poor sanitation you have poor health,” Atuko said.
In addition to encouraging the proper use of latrines, there was a need to increase the number of latrines in households, not only for hygiene but also for cultural reasons, as local customs did not allow men and women to share toilet facilities, he added.
The KRCS, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and other NGOs, was sensitising people in the affected areas to the importance of good sanitation and discouraging practices such as bathing and washing clothes in the rivers.
According to Atuko, this “was a tall order”, since many people in the region used Lake Victoria and the rivers as their main sources of water.
However, he added, the number of cholera cases had fallen. “Last week, we only reported four cases; four weeks ago, there were more than 100 cases,” he said.
The health ministry is enforcing public health laws by discouraging hawking of food in open markets and streets. It also conducted mapping of water sources for chlorination and was promoting the use of water purifiers.
“We have to enforce proper eating standards,” Sharif said. “We are discouraging roadside cooking.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), inadequate food safety and hygiene are also major contributors to the sporadic outbreaks of the disease.
Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and is characterised by watery diarrhoea, vomiting, muscle cramps and severe dehydration. Treatment is mainly by rehydration and up to 80 percent of cholera cases can be treated successfully using oral rehydration salts.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )More Education Equals Less Teen Pregnancy and HIV
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Girls who stay in school are less likely to contract HIV |
NAIROBI, 25 July 2008 (PlusNews) – Keeping Kenyan girls in school and ensuring they have access to HIV and sex education has a dramatic effect on lowering future levels of HIV, according to experts.
“Young people do not have the information they need, and the dropout rate, particularly for girls, is still too high,” said Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Adolescence (CSA), which conducts research into teen behaviour and implements programmes for them.
“Dropping out of school ensures a life of poverty for these girls, and many of them also wind up HIV-positive because the male-female power dynamics become even more slanted against them.”
Although the government introduced free primary school education in 2003, an estimated one million children of school-going age are not attending school. Up to 13,000 Kenyan girls drop out of school every year as a result of pregnancy, and around 17 percent of girls have had sex before they turn 15. HIV prevalence in Kenyan women aged between 15 and 24 is about 5 percent, compared with just one percent for their male counterparts.
The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2004 found that better educated girls were less likely to marry early, more likely to practice family planning, and that their children had a higher survival rate.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, uneducated girls are also more likely to contract HIV/AIDS, which spreads twice as quickly among them than among girls who have had even some schooling.
The Ministry of Education has an HIV/AIDS prevention and sex education curriculum that focuses on upper-primary and secondary school, but no specific time is set aside for this, leaving teachers and school heads to fit in the subject at their discretion.
“I would like to see compulsory comprehensive HIV and sex education – and not just the bare bones, but something that goes further and teaches kids to become responsible for their actions and take greater control of their future,” Muganda-Onyando said. “Not enough teachers have been trained for this type of education, so children are leaving school with academic qualifications and not many life skills.”
These were not the only obstacles: the strong influence of fundamentalist Christians in HIV funding to Kenya had also played a part in preventing sex education from being taught in schools; and “There is also resistance from parents, many of whom feel school is not the place to learn about sex,” she said.
This lack of information meant girls were not practising safe sex; a 2003 government survey noted that just 25 percent of women aged 15 to 24 reported using a condom the last time they had sex with a non-marital, non-cohabiting partner.
Schools ill-equipped for sex education
Schools in remote, rural areas and deprived urban areas are often ill-prepared to handle sex education; many have not seen the government’s curriculum.
“We don’t have sex education or HIV education; the government hasn’t given us any materials or training so we don’t know where to start,” said Christopher Barassa, principal of Genesis Joy Primary and Secondary School in Mathare, Nairobi’s second-largest slum.
Although registered with the Ministry of Education and the Nairobi City Council, the school is considered as ‘non-formal’ because of its location and lack of facilities; it has no playing ground or toilets, so the school is surrounded by ‘flying toilets’ – faecal matter wrapped in plastic bags and thrown away – and garbage. All the students are from the slum, and Barassa says keeping them in school can be difficult.
 When we investigate the pregnancies, it is almost always an older man … over twenty and sometimes over thirty. We work with the local police to prosecute them. |
“Our drop-out rate is not very high, but teen pregnancy is a real problem,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. The school’s policy is to encourage girls to return to school after they give birth, but many felt too stigmatised or had no help to look after their children and therefore stayed away.
“When we investigate the pregnancies, it is almost always an older man … over twenty and sometimes over thirty,” he said. “We work with the local police to prosecute them – we recently had a 31-year-old man arrested for marrying one of our students who was just 15.”
He noted that many parents in the slum had inadequate control because work kept them away from their children, sometimes for days. As a result, children learnt about sex from the wrong sources, such as the numerous video halls that allowed children to view pornographic films.
“The girls also have to live in one room with their parents until they are mature, and many of them witness their parents having sex, so they learn about it early,” Barassa said. “Sometimes they get a man when they are still young in order to get out of that situation.”
More sex education, less sex
The CSA runs projects aimed at lowering the drop-out rate for girls and teaching them about sexual and reproductive health, including HIV. “The projects train teachers to impart life skills, create safe spaces in schools where girls can freely discuss the issues they are facing, and foster mentor-protégé relationships between older and younger students, so the younger ones have somewhere to turn,” CSA’s Muganda-Onyando said.
“One of the big problems has been the breakdown of our traditional African systems, where an aunt or grandmother was responsible for sex education … people say discussions about sex are taboo in Africa, but this is not true,” she said. “We lost those systems through colonisation and modernisation, and they haven’t been replaced; these projects are trying to give children back that support system.”
The CSA also establishes ties with the community, encouraging parents to take an active role in teaching their children about sex, and to behave more responsibly themselves.
The initiative, which is being implemented in more than 100 schools around the country, has had positive results so far: participating schools have noted a significant drop in teen pregnancy, higher retention and completion rates of school education, and improved self-esteem and confidence among girls, which in turn has led to higher scores in exams.
“Girls also need to be supported with uniforms, books, and other material necessities for school,” said Principal Barassa. “If a girl has everything she needs for school, she can stay in school and concentrate on her studies, and she will not look for an older man to buy them for her in exchange for sex.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )PMTCT Services not Reaching Rural Women in Kenya
 Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN |
| Many of the women are unaware of their status |
ISIOLO, 24 July 2008 (PlusNews) – The government’s campaign to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child is failing pregnant HIV-positive women in Kenya’s remote rural areas.
A shortage of testing sites and trained medical staff in rural areas means many of these women are unaware of their status and that their babies are at risk of contracting the virus.
“You have been blessed with a baby; as part of the Government’s free child health care, take your child for HIV testing six weeks after birth,” reads a poster at the Isiolo district hospital in Kenya’s Eastern Province. “If found positive, your child will receive free care and treatment. Children are a blessing – nurture their health.”
These public service messages, strategically placed in government hospitals, are meant to encourage women to use prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services. But the messages and the services they advertise are only useful to women who live close to district hospitals.
“Women attending antenatal care services are never tested for HIV in remote areas of Samburu district [in the northwest]. The services are only available at the district and some few divisional health centres … many children are contracting the virus from their parents,” Margaret Leshore of the local NGO, the Samburu East Women’s Empowerment Programme, told IRIN/PlusNews.
“We know that HIV transmission to the unborn can be prevented; transmission while breastfeeding can also be avoided, but we are lacking all these services,” she added.
Heavily pregnant Julie Leresh, the mother of four young children, attends the antenatal clinic at Samburu’s Lerata dispensary but does not know her HIV status and does not perceive herself or her children to be at risk of infection.
More information and awareness needed
“I have no reason to be tested for HIV. I have heard a lot about it … I don’t stay in town – it affects those who reside in town and it is all because of what they eat and their behaviour,” she told IRIN/PlusNews.
Many rural women in the area have views similar to those of Leresh, and health workers have pointed out that unless information about the pandemic is brought to grassroots communities, HIV will continue to spread unchecked. In Samburu, where ignorance about HIV is widespread, prevalence is 6.1 percent, compared to the national average of about 5 percent.
| I have no reason to be tested for HIV. I have heard a lot about it … I don’t stay in town it affects those who reside in town and it is all because of what they eat and their behaviour |
In areas where services are present, health workers say they should be culturally sensitive if they are to have the intended impact. “Women who are strict Muslims can never allow to be attended by a man,” said Ali Boru of the NGO, Isiolo Youth against AIDS and Poverty.
“Also, some of the locals are reluctant to be tested by local health personnel, because some cases of those who were found to be HIV positive are said to have been leaked to the community – it is the worst fear for many.”
Boru said the problem was compounded by a severe shortage of qualified medical personnel and counsellors in the region.
The Kenya Red Cross and the government recently drew up a five-year plan to combat the spread of HIV by equipping existing health centres in rural areas with voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services and using mobile VCT centres.
Dr Robert Ayisi, PMTCT coordinator at the National AIDS and STI (sexually transmitted infections) Control Programme, acknowledged that women in rural areas were worse off.
“We are working hard with our partners in remote areas to ensure that all women, be they rural or urban, have access to PMTCT services,” he told IRIN/PlusNews.
According to the government, an estimated 19,000 babies contracted HIV during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding in 2006.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )No Substitute for Support When Taking ARVs
 Photo: Waweru Mugo/IRIN |
| “They know where the shoe pinches most” |
MERU, 16 July 2008 (PlusNews) – “We [people living with HIV] must eat well, must keep off stress – it is not good for you … if you can, please walk out on anything annoying and go and watch Vitimbi [a popular TV sitcom] or sing your favourite song … be happy and positive.”
This is part of a message Dorothy Kendi* gives her ‘class’ of HIV-positive people at Meru district hospital in eastern Kenya. Her students listen eagerly, interrupting her dialogue every now and then with questions about diet, adhering to an antiretroviral (ARV) drug regimen and other lifestyle issues.
Kendi has lived with the virus for the past 23 years, during which time she has gathered a wealth of knowledge. She has also become a valued asset of Zingatia Maisha (ZM) (Swahili for focus on life), a project started in 2006 and supported by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline through the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), as well as the African Medical and Research Foundation and the Ministry of Health, among others.
The project empowers communities to participate in HIV care and treatment, with a focus on encouraging people living with HIV/AIDS to take a more active role in the fight against HIV.
“Zingatia Maisha came here to help those of us who are infected. Those on ARVs have been trained to stick to drug prescriptions to the letter, and we have been taught good nutrition habits and positive living,” she told IRIN/PlusNews.
Rogers Simiyu, programme officer for EGPAF, said: “The number of people testing HIV-positive was overwhelming health facilities and health workers, so we decided to go into the community to get support for the programmes.”
He added that the project was particularly useful on the issue of adherence, because while so much focus had gone on increasing the numbers of people on ARVs, there was not enough on keeping them on the drugs.
“HIV-positive people usually visit the clinic once a month, but they live in the community for the other 29 days. It’s important for them to have support systems within their social networks.”
Support groups a “safety net”
The ZM initiative fosters adult, paediatric and youth support groups. Group leaders assist with client referrals and ARV defaulter tracing, while HIV-positive youth and adult members pair up as ‘treatment buddies’ to check on one another’s health and general welfare. Groups also engage in income-generating activities to improve the socio-economic welfare of members.
Kendi, a leader of Meru’s Mwiteria support group, is among the many volunteers who train visitors to the hospital’s comprehensive care centre. For example, every Monday morning, when infected children gather with parents or guardians on their clinic days, she discusses ARV adherence, paediatric psychosocial support and stigma.
“Using HIV-positive people to pass on these messages is really useful – I have often heard them say they know where the shoe pinches most,” EGPAF’s Simiyu said. “They understand exactly what people are going through and can deal with them on the same level.”
He said the support groups had provided a crucial ‘safety net’ for newly diagnosed HIV-positive people, because stigma and discrimination were still high in Kenya and the groups acted as a good buffer against society’s negative attitude.
“In our talks at the centre, and during community outreaches, we also emphasise the importance of forming or strengthening [HIV/AIDS] support groups, disclosure, behaviour change and healthy eating, and discuss opportunistic infections,” said Zablon Kithinji*, an official of Meru’s Kagendo support group.
Local health workers said the ZM project and its involvement in the community had had a significant impact on the care and treatment of people living with HIV in the region.
“The support groups system has encouraged people to freely discuss AIDS, there is widespread knowledge dissemination at the community level and, interestingly, more people are now keen to know their [HIV] status,” said Meru’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr James Gitonga.
Simiyu said the Meru hospital had noticed shorter counselling times, as many patients came to the centre equipped with knowledge gained from the community outreach projects run by the support groups.
Kenya has lost more than 3,000 nurses in the past five years, with most leaving for jobs in Europe and the United States. In an effort to bolster HIV programmes, lay people are increasingly being involved in the less technical aspects of care.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Q&A: How Not to Resettle IDPs
I
nterview with Prisca Kamungi, Director of the Internal Displacement Policy and Advocacy Centre
NAIROBI, Jul 22 (IPS) – Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Return Home, in Kiswahili), designed to help about 350,000 IDPs living in camps across the country go back to their homes and farms has achieved its primary objective, at least according to the Kenyan government. Officials claim that most of the camps are closed and only 30,000 are living in the few that remain, but these numbers are disputed by independent analysts.
Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka said last week that the plan has graduated to its second phase, which he called “Operation Ujirani Mwema” (Good Neighbourliness). In this phase the displaced families and those who displaced them will learn how to accept each other and to coexist peacefully.
But does this official version reflect the situation on the ground? A report by the government-funded Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights found the plan to be hastily implemented and full of flaws. It also noted that most of the families returning home were in fact moved to satellite camps near their farms so that they were able to do farming, but could not live in their homes due to hostility from the local communities.
For the last few weeks, Prisca Kamungi (pictured), Director of the Nairobi-based Internal Displacement Policy and Advocacy Centre, has visited 30 old camps and satellite camps in some of the worst affected areas, in the Rift Valley and Eastern Province.
She told IPS reporter Najum Mushtaq what she saw in the camps, what she thinks of Operation Rudi Nyumbani and how internal displacement is linked to the larger Kenyan problems of poverty, slums and gender.
IPS: What is the current status of internally displaced persons? How many camps and IDPs have benefited from Operation Rudi Nyumbani?
Prisca Kamungi: All these statistics on IDPs and resettlement are not reliable. The government says only 30,000 people are left in 38 IDP camps; the Kenya Red Cross puts the figure at 68 camps, while OCHA’s latest estimates count about 56,000 people still living in IDP camps.
The statistics are not an indicator of the situation we saw on the ground. Each source gives a number according to its own criteria of who is an IDP and what constitutes a camp. For instance, the government has been doing a profiling exercise to resettle the IDPs. But it only recognises as ‘genuine’ IDPs those families and persons who own land.
If you don’t own land, then for the purposes of resettlement you are not an IDP. All the official assistance to returning IDPs had so far only been given to those with proof of land ownership or who can be identified as such by the area chief (an administrative official under district officer).
Most people still living in camps are landless people, businessmen and workers who have nowhere to go.
IPS: Is this a newly-defined criterion?
PK: No, the government is following the strategy employed by the 2004 Task Force on the IDPs from the 1992 and 1997 displacements.
The Task Force had recognised only land title deeds or letters of allotment as proof of being a genuine IDP. The rationale was to eliminate bogus claims of compensation. The same formula is being applied in this case.
This policy has been used this time also to determine who gets 10,000 to 25,000 Kenyan shillings (roughly $160 – $390) and other assistance under Operation Nyumbani. But I understand the government is discussing with the Chamber of Commerce some modalities of assisting business people.
IPS: What does this means then for the rest of the IDPs?
PK: The biggest problem is that this policy leaves out those displaced from and to urban areas altogether, business people and farmers who do not own land.
It leaves out women, many of whom do not own land.
The government as well as the aid agencies have been focusing largely on IDPs in the Rift Valley, Nyanza and Central Province. But the IDPs from the Eastern Province such as the Ichamus, in Mt. Elgon and those in urban areas like Nairobi have been forgotten.
The displaced include all sorts of other people: families that rent land for farming, squatters who were living and working on other people’s lands, small shopkeepers, and farm and factory workers. For example, the post-election violence in Nyanza province and its major city, Kisumu, was not about land and most of the people displaced from there were not land owners but workers and shopkeepers.
In addition, a large number of displaced people did not come to live in the camps but stayed either with family and friends or rented their own places after their forced eviction. They, too, need assistance but only a few of them have got registered with the government or the Red Cross.
So, while the government has indeed relocated thousands of IDPs to their original land, even if most of them are still living in satellite camps and amid inhospitable communities, the plan leaves out other major categories of IDPs. And then there are IDPs from previous conflicts or as a result of ongoing conflicts not directly related to the 2007 elections.
All of them are forgotten IDPs of Kenya who do not appear in the resettlement plans.
IPS: What do you think will be the consequences of this policy?
PK: Displacement generates a vicious cycle of poverty. The manner in which it is being handled now will aggravate Kenya’s crisis of poverty, especially in urban slums.
According to UN Habitat statistics, there was a huge increase in slums and slum population between 1992 and 1995. Before the 1992 conflict, in which almost as many people were displaced as in 2008, there were only two slums in Nairobi. Now, there are over a dozen of them.
The dispersal of the current lot of IDPs will raise poverty levels and thus create more slums. The same goes for other cities where the IDPs have been scattered. Even the recipients of compensation cannot build a house or restart a business with the money they’re given. But giving them more money will not solve the problem either because of diminished purchasing power and the multiple effects of the global food crisis.
A huge population has been pushed into the bracket of the poor — the less-than-a-dollar-a-day group — and many are likely to gravitate to urban slums.
IPS: Is there a pattern to the process of return? Who’s returning and who’s not?
PK: Other than the land-ownership factor, during our visit to several camps we found that many returning families are leaving their children behind in the camps, or in rented rooms, or with relatives. One reason is that there are schools near these camps and the children can continue studying.
But, as a result, families are getting dispersed and children become more vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation and abuse. This is a very serious situation and this phenomenon is widespread. As adult males leave their wives and children behind in order to go check on the security situation in return areas, or to register with the government for the Ksh 10,000 assistance, families are breaking up. In some towns, child-headed displaced families are increasing.
IPS: Has it also meant a greater burden on women and more families without a male provider?
PK: Yes. Displaced women, particularly in central Kenya and in parts of Nairobi, are the worst victims. Men leave the camps and start living in satellite camps or in their old homes but are not able to bring their families along. In some cases, children are distributed to other family members in safe areas.
The situation of women living in rented accommodation or with relatives who are tired of being nice and compassionate is very bad, and for those whose men have left them behind — it is terrible.
One of the unreported aspects of the violence is how many women in inter-ethnic marriages were asked by their men to leave and live with their own families. Marriages were broken because the wife belonged to the other rival tribe. These women are not accepted back by their own families also.
The women staying behind in the camps are not certain if or when their men would be back to take them along. The social disturbance caused by the violence and displacement has affected women and children most severely.
IPS: Are the peace initiatives working in communities to which the IDPs are returning?
PK: There are some success stories. But in most places like Burnt Forest and Eldoret the hostile attitude of the local communities has deterred the process of return.
The government-appointed district peace committees and committees of elders, which have existed for a long time, have had little impact in this situation. In Kenya, tribal and clan chiefs and elders are not as strong or influential as in some other parts of Africa such as West Africa.
The youth, who are the main perpetrators of the violence do not attend peace meetings or pay attention to elders. In these committees, the youth have little representation. In most cases, these peace initiatives are like preaching to the choir because the real agents of violence are not engaged in peace-building. Also, the peace processes should have been initiated before resettlement not afterwards.
Another drawback of these peace committees is that adequate information is not being provided to the displaced people. In one of the camps I visited, people were unaware that a meeting of the peace committee was going on in the police station nearby. The people for whom these committees are supposed to work are not informed or engaged in the process.
(END/2008)
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Hundreds Still Displaced in Nairobi
 Photo: Allan Gichigi/IRIN |
| IDPs at the Mathare Chief’s camp in Nairobi. |
NAIROBI, 22 July 2008 (IRIN) – Hundreds of Kenyans displaced during post-election violence in early 2008 in the capital, Nairobi, are still in camps more than two months after the government launched a countrywide resettlement programme.
“Many of the displaced were tenants whose houses were destroyed or have since been occupied by other people; dozens were landlords, mostly in the Mathare slums, and these are the ones whose resettlement is difficult,” Abdi Galgalo, the chief of Mathare, told IRIN on 21 July.
Anthony Mwangi, the public relations manager for the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), knew of 778 IDPs in the city.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Kenya) said in an update covering 3-9 July that some 59,666 IDPs remained in 89 IDP camps, while 98,289 others had been registered in 134 transit sites across the country. Government figures indicated that 212,590 IDPs had returned to areas where they had been displaced.
The government, through the ministry of special programmes, launched “Operation Rudi Nyumbani” (Return Home) on 5 May, targeting at least 158,000 IDPs in camps across the country, most of them in Rift Valley Province, which bore the brunt of the violence.
With more than 85,000 of the displaced having left the camps since then, the government began the “reconstruction” phase of the programme on 20 July, to help the returnees build their homes and restart subsistence activities. Special Programmes Minister Naomi Shaban launched the programme in Uasin Gishu district in the Rift Valley.
Displaced in the city
Galgalo said the IDP camp near his office had been emptying gradually since May, with 213 IDPs in July.
The problem with IDPs in urban areas, he said, was that the majority were from slum areas where land disputes were common, hence their reluctance to move out of the camps.
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Hundreds of Kenyans were displaced during post-election violence in early 2008 in Nairobi |
“Food and availability of medicine are key problems for those still in the camp as they depend on well-wishers and they remain here as efforts are being made to resettle them,” Galgalo said.
He said disputes over land in the slums, especially for those who owned houses, had complicated and slowed the IDPs’ return to their homes. He added that the government had set up peace-building committees to help reconcile the slum dwellers and encourage the displaced to return home.
Godfrey Ngugi, the chairman of the IDP camp in Mathare, said the recent cold weather had made conditions even more difficult.
“The major problem for us is when one of the IDPs falls ill; the cold season has not helped matters and we have had cases of cold-related ailments increasing,” Ngugi said. “Although we have the Kenya Red Cross assisting us, we need medical attention.”
He said there were dozens of children under five who need medical attention due to the cold.
On 12 May, the government raised Ksh1.46 billion (US$22.4 million) of the Ksh30 billion ($462 million) it said it needed to resettle at least 350,000 IDPs.
“The magnitude of the destruction caused by the violence was enormous; we will therefore require about 30 billion shillings to meet the full costs of resettlement, including reconstruction of basic housing, replacement of household effects, as well as rehabilitation of community utilities and institutions destroyed during the violence,” President Mwai Kibaki said on 12 May during a funding drive in Nairobi.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Mau Forest Destruction Will Cost the Kenya Economy US$300M
Protecting Mau Forest in Kenya’s Economic Interest
Nairobi, 17 July 2008-Kenya stands to lose a nature-based economic asset worth over US $300 million alone to the tea, tourism and energy sectors if the forest of the Mau Complex continues to be degraded and destroyed, the UN Environment Programme said today.
The Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, announced this week that the Kenyan government is taking steps to combat the destruction of the largest forest ecosystem in Kenya.
The Mau Complex is not only an asset of national importance that supports key economic sectors in Rift Valley and western Kenya, including energy, tourism, agriculture and water supply, but it is also the single most important water catchment in the Rift Valley and western Kenya.
“For the past few years UNEP has been documenting for the Kenyan Government and the people of Kenya the continued destruction and erosion of this vital ecosystem. It has reached a point where if no measures are taken, Kenya will lose one of its fundamental assets,” warned Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister convened a multi-stakeholder forum to collect information to determine a way forward for protection of the Mau Complex.
“The excisions and the widespread encroachments have led to the destruction of nearly a quarter the Mau Complex area over the last 15 years. Such an extensive and on-going destruction of a key natural asset for the country is nothing less than a national emergency,” said the Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The forum highlighted the need to restore the forest of the Mau Complex. Based on the forum discussions, a high-level task force was established to address encroachments into the forests. A new enforcement structure will also be set-up to tackle rampant illegal logging and charcoal making in the Mau Complex.
“We are looking at restoring the largest ‘water tower’ of this country and all the services it provides to the nation. We are looking at securing the livelihood’s of millions of people who depend directly and indirectly on the Mau Forests Complex,” said the Prime Minister.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 35 so far )Tackling Corruption in Humanitarian Intervention
 Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN |
| Bribe taking: A new report urges humanitarian agencies to work harder and more closely together to minimise various forms of corruption that can affect the delivery of emergency aid |
NAIROBI, 18 July 2008 (IRIN) – Humanitarian agencies should work harder and more closely together to minimise various forms of corruption that can affect the delivery of emergency aid and harm the reputation of agencies involved, according to a new report.
“The humanitarian community should step up efforts to address corruption and reduce corruptions risks,” according to Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Assistance , a report by Transparency International, the Feinstein International Center and Tufts University, and the Humanitarian Policy Group at the UK’s Overseas Development Institute.
“There remains little knowledge about the extent or consequences of corruption in humanitarian assistance, little shared knowledge about preventing corruption under emergency circumstances beyond a few standard practices, and a degree of taboo about confronting it publicly,” noted the report, which is based on research involving seven major international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The report explains that, contrary to widespread perception, corrupt practices extend well beyond financial misappropriation and include many forms of “abuse of power”, such as cronyism, nepotism, “sexual exploitation and coercion and intimidation of humanitarian staff or aid recipients for personal, social or political gain, manipulation of assessments, targeting and registration to favour particular groups and diversion of assistance to non-target groups”.
 The humanitarian community should step up efforts to address corruption and reduce corruptions risks |
The report underlined that humanitarian action is particularly vulnerable to corruption, because of the unique nature and context of its delivery. A rapid “burn rate” of expenditure is often expected while “normal physical, administrative, legal and financial infrastructure and services have often been substantially or entirely damaged or destroyed.”
“In many cases,” the report noted, “there may be rapid turnover of supervisory staff, so there is very little accumulated knowledge of the context and very few staff at the supervisory level remain long enough to develop deeper contextual knowledge that could mitigate some of the risk of corruption,” it said.
Based on the research behind the report, Transparency International plans to release a “good practice” handbook in 2009. The report itself recommended that humanitarian agencies take a number of steps to tackle corruption.
These include: making it easier for staff to discuss and report corruption; incorporating the issue into training programmes and into emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction strategies; ensuring any corruption policies are carried right down to the field and adapted to emergency contexts; increasing information transparency and programme monitoring; and encouraging inter-agency coordination.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Healthcare Hurdles in Nairobi’s Slums
 Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN |
| Slums are underserved in terms of access to basic amenities |
NAIROBI, 11 July 2008 (IRIN) – Quality healthcare is a luxury often beyond the reach of those who live in Nairobi’s slums, such as mother-of-seven Grace Awour Opondo.
“When you are sick you buy medicine from the local shops,” Opondo told IRIN. “If you are lucky you recover because the medicine is not usually the right one.
“Sometimes there is no medicine even in the hospitals, so they send you out with a prescription,” she said. “Then the chemists are expensive so often one has to make do without the medicine.”
According to Sakwa Mwangala, a programme manager with the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), the fact that people are squatting on government land often prevents them from accessing essential services. Slums are regarded as informal illegal settlements, which means they are underserved in terms of infrastructure development and access to basic amenities.
“Government health facilities are also not easily accessible for most slum residents,” said Mwangala, who heads AMREF’s Kibera integrated healthcare programme. Kibera, on the southwestern edge of central Nairobi, is one of the largest and most densely populated slums in sub-Saharan Africa.
Most people operating health “facilities” in the slums are quacks, he said. “There is a lack of quality control, with the people in most of these clinics lacking skills.”
The urban poor fare worse than their rural counterparts on most health indicators, according to a report, Profiling the burden of disease on the residents of Nairobi slums prepared by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC).
Pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases and stillbirths account for more than half the deaths of children under-five, while HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, interpersonal violence injuries and road traffic accidents account for more than two-thirds of deaths among people aged five years and older, stated the report.
The poor health status of slum children is in part due to continuous exposure to environmental hazards coupled with a lack of basic amenities.
“The chances of one becoming sick are high because of the poor sanitation; most of the houses are also poorly ventilated,” according to Leonard Wawire, a teacher in the Mathare slum.
“Here, there are no trees to clean the air; any plant growing is usually growing out of waste,” Wawire said.
Prevention measures
Eliya Zulu, APHRC’s deputy director of research, told IRIN it was important to adopt a holistic approach to healthcare for the urban poor, one that focused as much on prevention – through improved nutrition and immunisation against major childhood diseases – as on treatment.
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Grace Opondo, a resident of Mathare slums |
“Increasingly, most people in the urban areas are living in deplorable conditions yet it is generally assumed that the better hospitals and schools are in the urban areas,” Zulu said.
When conducting general health surveys, urban areas tend to rank better than rural areas in terms of the health indicators. This, however, failed to bring into focus the health situation of the urban poor, he said.
The problems of the urban poor have often been overlooked while rural areas are seen as more vulnerable to shocks.
“In the rural set-up there is a sense of normalcy; you can have your toilet, the community also has a stream from which they draw their water – this is not the case in the slums,” Mwangala of AMREF said.
Many deaths in the slums are caused by preventable and treatable conditions, according to the APHRC report; inadequate sanitation encourages the spread of skin and waterborne diseases.
In a bid to improve sanitation in Kibera, a Kenyan NGO, the Umande Trust, is running a project that not only provides quality toilets for residents but also transforms human waste into biogas and liquid fertiliser.
Residents in areas such as Katwekera and Laini Saba in Kibera, pay two shillings (three US cents) to use the toilets and showers, according to Josiah Omotto of the Trust. For a subscription of 80 shillings ($1.19) a month, households get unlimited access to the facility.
The buildings’ basements house bio-digester domes, which turn human waste into methane and liquid fertiliser.
| When you are sick you buy medicine from the local shops; if you are lucky you recover because the medicine is not usually the right one |
According to Omotto, these help reduce the local use of firewood. Already, he said, the methane from the facility in Laini Saba was being used for fuel by a local nursery school. There are plans to construct similar facilities in other slums to supply the gas to residents living near the facilities.
So far, at least 500 residents are benefiting from each facility.
The division of environmental health in Kenya’s Ministry of Health is finalising policy documents aimed at ensuring that 90 percent of households have access to, and make use of, hygienic, affordable, functional and sustainable toilet and hand-washing facilities.
The policies also aim at reducing the national rate of preventable sanitation-related diseases by half.
Post-Violence Sex Work Boom in Kenya
 Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson/IRIN |
| Desperation limits your options |
MOMBASA, 9 July 2008 (PlusNews) – Like thousands of other Kenyans, Susan Wairimu, 17, was displaced from her home in the Rift Valley Province’s Molo district during the violence that followed a disputed presidential election in December 2007 and sought shelter in the nearby town of Nakuru.
A cousin living in the coastal town of Mombasa offered to accommodate her until the violence ended, offering an escape from the single tent she shared with her parents at the displaced persons camp in Nakuru.
“I had no idea of the kind of work my cousin used to do in the beginning; I came to know some few days after my arrival, when she told me she operates as a call girl from the beaches.”
Kenya’s coast is one of its most popular tourist destinations: an estimated two million tourists visited Kenya in 2007, many of them heading for the Indian Ocean towns of Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu, where commercial sex work is one of the main ways many women earn money.
Before long Wairimu was introduced to the business of selling sex. “We now have the skills and have learnt that the amount of money a man parts with will determine the kind of pleasure we will offer him. For example, making love without a condom will cost a client more money than using one,” she said.
“The killing in my village taught me a lesson and prepared me for a tough life, and now I do not fear death any more,” she added. “I do not fear HIV and I believe that you will die when your day arrives, and the disease will not determine, but only God.”
Wairimu accepts as little as 300 Kenya shillings (US$4.50) for an entire night, sometimes with two men.
Locals at the coast say sex workers in the region traditionally used to target wealthy foreign tourists, usually from Europe. Today, a fall in tourist numbers after the post-election violence and an increased number of sex workers means every man, old or young, black or white, is seen as a potential customer.
Wairimu is one of an estimated two hundred girls between 15 and 18 years of age who are now engaged in full-time sex work along Kenya’s coast, according to Solidarity with Women in Distress (SOLWODI), a local non-governmental organisation that sensitises sex workers to the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
Increase in child sex trade
Child sex work is not uncommon along the coast; a 2006 study by the government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that up to 30 percent of teenagers in some coastal areas were involved in casual sex for cash.
Agnetta Mirikau, a child protection specialist with UNICEF Kenya, told IRIN/PlusNews that the organisation had received reports of an increase in the child sex trade since the election.
SOLWODI’s field coordinator in Mombasa, Grace Odembo, told IRIN/PlusNews that most of the girls who resorted to sex work were high school drop-outs, which would make it difficult for them to find formal employment.
“The girls have opted to sell their bodies in order to get money for survival,” Odembo said. “We try as much as we can … to convince them out of [sex work].”
The 2006 study also found that 35.5 percent of all sex acts involving children and tourists took place without condoms, putting the girls at risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The HIV prevalence in Kenya’s Coast Province is 5.9 percent, higher than the national average of 5.1 percent.
SOLWODI runs counselling, return-to-school programmes and vocational skills training for girls who wish to get out of the trade. Since its formation in 1997, the organisation has managed to get 5,000 girls and women to leave the sex industry.
| The girls have opted to sell their bodies in order to get money for survival … We try as much as we can to convince them out of [sex work]. |
Hoteliers often turn a blind eye to residents bringing underage girls into their rooms, but some have a more strict policy regarding commercial sex on their premises.
“We never accommodate any visitors who try to check into our hotels with young-looking girls until we get some required details about the girl,” Mohammed Hersi, general manager of the Mombasa’s Sarova White Sands Beach Hotel, told IRIN/PlusNews. “[We usually] establish who the girls are, what they are up to and, most important, their ages.”
SOLWODI also trains hotels to implement an existing code of conduct to prevent sexual exploitation in the travel and tourism sector, but by late 2007, only 20 hotels had signed the code of conduct.
The deputy mayor of Mombasa, John Mcharo, said keeping the girls off the streets was difficult. “Yes, we can arrest the girls but only charge them with loitering, just like we’ve done before, but this can’t stop the girls from finding their way back to the streets and beaches as soon as they come out of our custody.”
Girls at the beach generally wear bathing suits, so it is difficult to distinguish between sex workers trawling the beach for customers and girls who are simply enjoying a day at the beach.
Local law enforcement officers and religious leaders have called on the government to do more to stop underage girls selling sex in the area. “The government has to come up with a special programme that can get the girls not only off the beaches but off the streets,” said Sheikh Mohammed Khalifa, organising secretary of the council of Imams and preachers of Kenya.
He added that his organisation frequently held workshops to urge underage girls to quit the trade, and provided them with spiritual guidance.
The government has a children’s department in every district, which is responsible for the protection of children from exploitation and abuse. According to Patrick Wafula, of the Mombasa police department, much of the work of the department’s special tourism unit consists of arresting the perpetrators of child sex abuse and exploitation.
“We usually carry out raids in areas we suspect to be meeting points for the girls and their potential clients,” he said.
The government also recently expanded the child protection units at police stations, adding children’s officers and improving judicial services, so that they are now better prepared to handle children’s issues.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Courting Disaster: Why Kenyans Must Stop Oloolua Nuclear Waste Plant
Kenya is a few days away from hosting the first ever dreaded and less understood radioactive waste processing facility at Oloolua, located at the institute of primate research in Kajiado district. If the facility is allowed to proceed, Kenyans will without doubt pay dearly, in the same way history is certain to harshly judge the current generation. Why?
With known impunity, corruption and weak institutional mechanisms, proposed relative mitigation measures on waste generation management, occupational hazards and safety will be flouted at the expense of severe environmental waste. Last week, a curious media advertisement from National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) confirmed that a full environment impact assessment report was available for inspection and all that was required was ‘oral or written comments within thirty (30) days..’
World statistics posted on the internet about nuclear substances are shocking: An example is that less than 8 kilograms of of a substance called plutonium is enough for one Nagasaki-type bomb. The technology applied in producing nuclear energy, particularly the process that turns raw uranium into lowly-enriched uranium, can also be used to produce highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is responsible for monitoring the world’s nuclear facilities and for preventing weapons proliferation, but their safeguards are said to have serious shortcomings. On April 26, 1986 the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power plant (in the former U.S.S.R and present-day Ukraine ) exploded, causing the worst nuclear accident ever.
Many troubles as a result
Firstly, 30 people were killed instantly, including 28 from radiation exposure, and a further 209 on site were treated for acute radiation poisoning.
Secondly, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reported to have found that the fallout from the explosion was incredibly far-reaching. For a time, radiation levels in Scotland , over 2,300 km away, were 10,000 times the norm.
Thirdly, thousands of cancer deaths were a direct result of the accident. The accident cost the former Soviet Union more than three times the economical benefits accrued from the operation of every other Soviet nuclear power plant operated between 1954 and 1990.
Fourthly, in March of 1979 equipment failures and human error contributed to an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor at Harrisburg , Pennsylvania , the worst such accident in U.S. history. Consequences of the incident include radiation contamination of surrounding areas, increased cases of thyroid cancer, and plant mutations.
Fifthly, according to the US House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences (CRAC2) for US Nuclear Power Plants” (1982, 1997), an accident at a US nuclear power plant could kill more people than were killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki .
What would be the possibilities of environmental degradation?
Firstly, all the steps in the complex process of creating nuclear energy entail environmental hazards.
Secondly, the mining of uranium, as well as its refining and enrichment, and the production of plutonium produce radioactive isotopes that contaminate the surrounding area, including the groundwater, air, land, plants, and equipment. As a result, humans and the entire ecosystem are adversely and profoundly affected.
Thirdly, some of these radioactive isotopes are extraordinarily long-lived, remaining toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.
What are the possible dangers of the Oloolua-type nuclear waste processing?
Firstly, nuclear waste is produced in many different ways. There are wastes produced in the reactor core, wastes created as a result of radioactive contamination, and wastes produced as a byproduct of uranium mining, refining, and enrichment. The vast majority of radiation in nuclear waste is given off from spent fuel rods.
Secondly, a typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive until it naturally decays.
Thirdly, the rate of decay of a radioactive isotope is called its half-life, the time in which half the initial amount of atoms present takes to decay. The half-life of Plutonium-239, one particularly lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.
Fourthly, the hazardous life of a radioactive element (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) is at least 10 half-lives. Therefore, Plutonium-239 will remain hazardous for at least 240,000 years.
When a proposal to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain , Nevada an opposition to it was strong on the 10-point action plan
Experts believe that the best action would be to cease producing nuclear energy (and waste), to leave the existing waste where it is, and to immobilize it. They say that there are a few different methods of waste immobilization. In the vitrification process, waste is combined with glass-forming materials and melted. Once the materials solidify, the waste is trapped inside and can’t easily be released. It is for this reason that Kenya is truly not ready to host this ‘investment’ that could turn out to be a nightmare.
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*If you believe in this founded fears, and you would like the Government to delay
making approving the Oloolua nuclear waste processing plant until sufficient
clarifications are made please sign up your name by sending an email to:
info@kara.or.ke today.
*Please forward this article to as many people as possible in your mailing list.
Kenya Alliance of Residents Associations (KARA)
Background
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the DoE’s Yucca Mountain Plan
by David Krieger and Marissa Zubia*,
August 23, 2002
Nuclear energy has always been promoted to the public in fraudulent ways. At the outset, it was claimed that it would be “too cheap to meter,” a claim that was far from true even without taking into account large government subsidies provided to the nuclear industry. Later, and still today, nuclear energy is promoted as being “clean, safe and environmentally friendly.” This claim should have been definitively laid to rest with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
Now the proponents of nuclear energy are pushing for long-term storage of highly radioactive nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The $7 billion that the Department of Energy (DoE) has spent on researching the suitability of Yucca Mountain, Nevada as a radioactive waste storage site has only served to prove that the volatile Yucca Mountain itself is a terrible place to dump the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste that has been building up at nuclear power plants. It is a shortsighted and dangerous scheme that would endanger tens of millions of Americans now and for generations to come.
There are many sound reasons to oppose the Department of Energy’s plan to transport nuclear wastes from throughout the country to Yucca Mountain. Here are our top ten.
1. Accomplishes No Reasonable Objective
Yucca Mountain does not eliminate on-site storage of nuclear waste. After Yucca Mountain is full, there will still be 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste stored on-site at reactors throughout the country. There will also be 77,000 tons of such waste moving around the US over the next 30 years, traveling from one of 131 sites an average of 2000 miles per shipment to Yucca Mountain. If the purpose of the Yucca Mountain project is to consolidate the wastes, that goal will clearly not be achieved.
2. Provides Minimal Protection
Yucca Mountain itself only provides a small portion of the “protection” that the proposed site promises. The casks that hold the waste are the actual protection, so why Yucca Mountain at all?
3. Creates More Nuclear Waste
Shipping the waste off-site will allow for the nuclear reactors to continue creating more waste long after the contracts for those sites were set to expire, thus continuing the cycle of producing extremely dangerous waste that no one knows how to safely dispose of. The nuclear industry has economic incentives for moving the waste off-site from the reactors.
4. Adverse Effects on Future Generations
The project is a distinct danger to defenseless citizens — not just in this generation, but thousands of generations to come will be affected by this decision. Plutonium-239, for example, has a half-life of 24,400 years, which means that the wastes will remain lethal for some 240,000 years.
5. Earthquake Danger
Yucca Mountain is directly above an active magma pocket and is the third most seismically active area in the United States, with over 600 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater on the Richter scale in the last 25 years alone. One such earthquake did over a million dollars worth of damage to the US Department of Energy’s own testing facility! The most recent earthquake on July 14, 2002 had a magnitude of 4.4.
6. Fifty Million People Endangered
Routes will move through 734 counties across the United States. The high-level radioactive waste contained in the casks will endanger 50 million innocent people who live within 3 miles of the proposed shipment routes. Hospitals, schools, businesses, emergency personnel, commuters, travelers, and passers-by will also cross paths with the shipments that will move through the country at an average rate exceeding six shipments per day. Community health facilities are not adequately prepared or equipped to deal with mass exposure to radioactive matter. To find out how close your residence or place of work is to the proposed routes, enter your address at http://www.mapscience.org .
7. Terrorist Attacks
The proposed shipments to Yucca Mountain would move along predictable routes through 44 states, and many major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta (daily shipments), Chicago (every 15 hours), Denver (every 13 hours), and Salt Lake City (every 7 hours). They would provide tempting targets for terrorists.
8. Costly Accidents and Limited Liability
For each spill that may occur (one out of every 300 shipments is expected to have an accident) the cost of the clean-up is estimated conservatively at $6 billion dollars. Thanks to Congress passing and repeatedly renewing the Price-Anderson Act, the nuclear industry’s liability is limited. Taxpayers will pay the bill for accidents even if they occur on reactor property.
9. Adverse Impact on Water Sources
Yucca Mountain sits above the only source of drinking water for the residents of Amargosa Valley. The aquifer below Yucca Mountain provides water to Nevada’s largest dairy farm, which supplies milk to some 30 million people on the west coast.
10. Violates Treaties
Yucca Mountain is located on Native American land, belonging to the Western Shoshone by the treaty of Ruby Valley. The Western Shoshone National Council has declared this land a nuclear free zone and demanded an end to nuclear testing and the dumping of nuclear wastes on their land.
It defies reason to expect that radioactive wastes will sit for tens of thousands of years undisturbed by unpredictable nature, by vengeful terrorists, or by human or technological errors in the design of the containment structure itself. The problem of what to do with high-level radioactive wastes warrants additional consideration and resources, including investigation of alternatives to Yucca Mountain. As an interim solution, the wastes should be converted to dry-cask storage and remain on-site where they were created.
Sources
1. Jaya Tiwari, “Time Running Out: Senate to Vote on Future of Yucca Mountain Project Soon,” Physicians for Social Responsibility Security Program Activist Update, (June 2002).
2. Western Shoshone National Council, “US Senate Vote Violates Treaty and Tribe’s Basic Human Rights,”(July 2002).
3. State of Nevada-Nuclear Projects Agency, Nuclear Neighborhoods, http://www.nuclearneighborhoods.org .
4. The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Office of the Governor, “A Mountain of Trouble: A Nation At Risk,” Volume 1, (February 2002).
5. Michael E. Long, “Half Life, The Lethal Legacy of America’s Nuclear Waste,” National Geographic, (July 2002).
6. Richard Wiles & James R. Cox, “What If…A Nuclear Waste Accident Scenario in Los Angeles, CA,” Environmental Working Groups, http://www.MapScience.org, (June 27, 2002).
*David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
*Marissa Zubia is the coordinator of the Foundation’s Renewable Energy Project.
©KARA Weekly Newsletter, June 2008
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