By Alexander Matheou, IFRC, regional representative for East Africa
Aid agencies typically use malnutrition rates of 15 per cent to define an emergency. In parts of Turkana in Northern Kenya, the rates are 37 per cent. Humanitarian assistance is now needed, but aid agencies need to appreciate why failed rains are triggering such recurrent crises, and they need to have both long-term and as short-term solutions in mind.
The malnutrition rates may be alarming, but they are not unique to 2011. Nor are the crowds of hungry, tired people that patiently gather each day around government buildings and distribution points. The adaptive strategies that had made life possible in Turkana for so long have been gradually eroding for decades.
The pastoralists of Turkana had one strategy above all others for surviving drought – mobility. As local water points dried up, they would move into Uganda, South Sudan or deeper into Kenya, to find water and grazing for their livestock. With livestock, pastoralists had food security. They could boost their diet with wild fruits and replenish lost livestock by raiding neighbouring tribes, and this way, survive the cycles of drought.
Today, grazing land and water points along traditional migration routes are fenced off by farms and national parks. Neighbouring tribes are armed with modern weapons. Population figures have risen sharply. As a result, when the droughts come, the pastoralists of Turkana are confined to a space that is too small to keep their livestock alive. There is fierce competition for limited resources, animals die, and food security plummets.
Many pastoralists have been forced to relocate to small settlements or towns. The more fortunate ones find casual employment or relief aid. Women relocate closer to schools where there may be school-feeding programmes for their children. Others stay in villages, eating wild fruits and burning trees to sell as charcoal. This shift in livelihoods is one of the main reasons there are such high levels of vulnerability in the region.
High malnutrition rates are chronic, and for years, aid has influenced not only the diet, but also the internal migration patterns and politics of Turkana. Yet dependency on aid is not as passive as it may look. The most significant survival strategies in Turkana are still home grown – mutual aid, lending, pooling resources, dividing a family in different locations to diversify options, seeking work in urban areas and trying to cultivate crops.
As creative as these attempts may be, they don’t appear to be generating enough income or food to support people. Aid agencies will need to scale up again with at least three interventions: firstly, to bring the malnutrition rates down, secondly, to complement government efforts to reduce the health impacts of poor diet and drought, and thirdly, to support more drought-resistant livelihood diversification.
Yet we should not stop there. The fact that these crises have been persistent for years should force the humanitarian community to try a different approach; to think beyond what we can give, and more about what empowers the communities where we are working.
A recent survey asked communities in Kenya to state their development priorities, and compared those priorities with those identified by local and foreign experts. The results revealed a significant disconnect between what people value most, and what they get in the form of assistance.
Social relations and safety were the top two community priorities – two things that pastoralists would need above all for vital reciprocal assistance, both within and between communities, and for mobility across borders. Formal education, creativity and self esteem also ranked highly. Ultimately, interventions that reinforce social networks, support conflict resolution, strengthen advocacy work, encourage education and promote viable urban and rural livelihoods are likely to matter most.
Although we are in a heightened crisis now and emergency aid is called for, it’s worth keeping these long-term issues in mind, because drought-affected areas will only grow in the coming decades, and the droughts themselves will last longer. The question is not only how to deal with this crisis, but how best to support communities living in arid lands in the years to come.
Share this