KENYA: Pastoralists face bleak future if help delays - Oxfam

Photo: John Nyaga/IRIN

A dead camel near Mandera, northeastern Kenya. Ordinarily camels are the most drought-resistant animals.

NAIROBI, 15 March 2006 (IRIN) - Pastoralists affected by the severe drought in Kenya could take up to 15 years to recover their livelihoods unless they are given immediate support by both the government and external donors, aid agency Oxfam International said on Wednesday. An estimated 3.5 million people in Kenya, most of them nomadic pastoralists, are suffering from the effects of a severe drought brought on by several consecutive seasons of failed rains. Oxfam blamed the pastoralists' lack of capacity to withstand the shock of the drought on their chronic poverty and limited livelihood alternatives. The agency also said that the crisis would worsen until the rains arrive in April and warned of a major humanitarian disaster should those rains fail. "The government of Kenya and the international community must respond urgently to prevent further human suffering by providing food aid, water and health assistance. Oxfam calls for a robust response to the [government/United Nations] Appeal for US $233 million launched on 8 February, with a frontloading of resources in this critical period," Oxfam said. The agency said death rates of cattle herds in some of the most severely affected areas were as a high as 95 percent and that local economies were crumbling. "Regenerating the economy once the immediate crisis passes will require the international community to provide cash-for-work schemes and restocking programmes to help pastoralists recover," Oxfam said in a report. Stronger commitment from the Kenyan government to improve health, education, infrastructure and other basic services for pastoral communities would be required to lift livestock keepers out of abject poverty. Local elders in Wajir, one of the worst affected districts in northeastern Kenya, told Oxfam that based on their experience during the 1992 drought, it could take as long as 15 years to build up livestock herds to pre-drought numbers unless the affected people were helped to restock. According to health charity Merlin, which is working in partnership with Oxfam in Wajir, the number of children requiring emergency supplementary feeding increased by 50 percent since January. Malnutrition rates in Kenya's Northeastern province, a vast arid or semi-arid region where the majority of inhabitants are nomadic pastoralists, are nearly double the World Health Organization's emergency threshold of 15 percent, according to Oxfam. "Beyond the immediate suffering, children recovering from such a trauma require many months of nutritional support and risk suffering long-term physical and mental developmental deficits. Human suffering associated with this crisis is severe and threatens to worsen," the agency said. Census statistics quoted by Oxfam indicated that some 64 percent of people in Northeastern province lived below the poverty line, compared with a national average of 53 percent, while more recent studies showed that pastoral wealth in the region had declined by more than 50 percent over the past 10 years. "Pastoralism is a viable livelihood and makes an important contribution to the Kenyan economy, but there is an urgent need for improved development and economic policies in drought-affected areas," said Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam regional director. Oxfam laid some of the blame for the vulnerability of the residents in the drought-prone areas on government neglect. "Those suffering the consequences cannot be held accountable for the failures of their leaders. Once the crisis is stabilised, the responsibility for ensuring the well-being of these people at risk must be returned to the government, with encouragement for investing in livelihood recovery and longer term measures to ensure the viability and quality of pastoralist life," Oxfam said. It urged the government and international donors to jointly support a proposed national drought-management contingency fund as a critical element of improved drought management in Kenya, saying the country's Arid Lands Development Policy was a technically sound roadmap that covered health and education services, livestock improvement and environmental conservation. Drought, which affects Kenya on a four-to-five-year cycle, was not necessarily the cause but the trigger of livelihood crises, according to Oxfam. "Low rainfall causes difficulties for pastoralists, but the gravity of the current situation stems from the lack of mechanisms with which to cope and sustain themselves, itself a product of years of neglect by central government," the agency said.