July, 2011
Responding to a number of concerns raised by supporters of CES Canada in Kenya, this report describes the desperate humanitarian crisis now facing East Africa. It also highlights the situation in Kakamega where CES has its base of operations. CES thanks the African Canadian Continuing Education Society (ACCES), Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the Anglican Church of Canada Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, the All Africa Global Media and AFP/Getty Images for source information.
The worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in six decades is currently affecting up to 10 million people. The United Nations describes the situation as the most severe food security emergency in the world today. Of great concern is the level of severe malnutrition among children. The mix of drought, skyrocketing food prices, food shortages, and deaths of livestock in large numbers has combined to make this situation a devastating one for millions of people in the region.
Dagahaley Camp, Dadaab NEP Kenya
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has found alarmingly high rates of malnutrition among the Somali refugees arriving and settling on the outskirts of the Dadaab refugee camp in north eastern Kenya. MSF has been providing medical care in Kenya since 1992, and has worked in the camps at Dadaab for a total of 14 years.
The Dadaab refugee camp complex consists of three camps: Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley. It is the largest refugee camp in the world, and it is beyond full. Originally built to house 90,000 people, camps have grown to 400,000. Thousands of Somali refugees continue to arrive every day, fleeing the violent conflict in their home country and devastating effects of ongoing drought and lack of food. The Somali refugees must make a perilous journey from their conflict-ridden country. They navigate for days through forbidding terrain, usually on foot. Most of those who arrive are badly malnourished; aid workers say many children don’t survive the trip, and some die as soon as they arrive. Exhausted after several days or weeks of travel, new arrivals receive inadequate assistance. Because there is no room for them, they must construct and settle in makeshift shelters on the outskirts of the camp. Mostly women and children, they shelter from the elements in domelike huts made from sticks, plastic sheeting and discarded cartons from aid packets.
Somali women constructing a simple shelter
Rural Kenya, particularly in the north and north east is suffering from this environmental disaster. Wajir, Marsabit, Turkana, Garissa, Kwale, and Mandera are some of the hardest hit districts with 1.5 million people on the verge of death. CES Kenya Board Member Rev. Livingstone Nyange travels regularly to Marsabit in his work with the Anglican Church of Kenya. He observes, “the situation on the ground is desperate…it is so difficult to see farmers abandoning their livestock, leaving their homes and moving into over congested slums in towns and cities to the south.”
The primary cause of drought in most of the regions of Sub-Saharan and Central Africa is climate change. Environmental refugees are displaced from their homeland and are forced to seek food and water elsewhere. However in Kenya, the issue is more of a food distribution/processing and infrastructure problem. There is already a policy for drought mitigation at the national, regional, and even local level. Despite that, a lack of distribution, transportation systems and local processing facilities is apparent.
Overall, it is clear that food distribution; supplementary feeding for nutrition targeting children, the elderly, and nursing mothers; and, water supply are critical needs. Farmers will need seeds, fertilizers and livestock restocking for the recovery process.
The reality is that Kenya is about to harvest a bumper crop of beans, sugar cane, maize and coffee. Other crops have done well too, and now many farmers are unable to sell their surplus, being forced to leave their produce to rot or be used as animal fodder. The IRIN Africa news article (August 5, 2011) entitled Hunger Amid Plenty www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93432 is worth reading.
CES Canada operates in a 1600 sq km area surrounding the town of Kakamega. Located in Western Kenya and near the Rift Valley Highlands the region is experiencing good rains this month. This will help in improving the yields for the maize crop that is now being planted. The expected good harvests will assist the drought-stricken areas to the north.
In Kakamega there is no drought, famine or surplus issues. Instead, there are opportunistic middlemen buying up the crops in advance from the farmers at higher prices than they would get by waiting. This drives local food prices up even more, causing the situation to become worse and making hunger a problem even in the regions where there is plenty of rain and food.
CES Canada ensures a daily hot meal to each student. The concern now is that the price of food sources has increased. The amount or quality of the meals cannot be compromised. The only options are to fund the increased food costs and continue to expand the agriculture program at Navakholo SS. This school initiated community run farm project is a model for other CES schools.
CES Canada’s primary focus is Development. Strategies to strengthen school communities lie solely in education, health, water and food production. In contrast, funding Aid only perpetuates the need for aid and places vulnerable populations in a cycle of dependency on outside help. Funding Development reduces the need for aid and produces sustainable, self-sufficient, functioning communities that can in turn help others to achieve the same.
Hello and thank you for this article. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.
Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.
Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.
According to Norman Myers environmental refugees are “people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty”.