State has ignored poverty and desperation in northern Kenya

By Billow Kerrow

Famine is now part of our nation’s branding. Hardly a month passes before we see shocking pictures of malnourished and starving Kenyans, feeding on wild berries or simply wasting away. However much the Brand Kenya may resent these images, it has become part of our country’s heritage. Even the people at Vision 2030 do not have ‘flagship’ projects to address the perennial criminal neglect of the pastoralist communities.

It just does not matter to folks in power anymore and their spokesman can outrageously deny that anyone is starving to death. If there is, he wants the poor folks to call him! And how many deaths will it take for him to know that too many people have died? The callous insensitivity and utter indifference to the plight of northern Kenyans has been the unenviable hallmark of successive regimes.

This explains why millions face death in this famine in spite of the trillions spent each year. Government officials have often reiterated that no Kenyan will die of hunger, citing the packed grain silos in parts of the country. These rhetorical and hypocritical pledges have camouflaged the grim reality until the Kenya Red Cross spilled the beans with shocking images from Turkana.

As often, it is the media and the international glare that goads the Government into a feeble action. Once the glare is gone, its concern about its deprived citizens also fizzles out and the resources entrusted to it looted. Because of criminal neglect by those entrusted to plan and provide for them, these poor Kenyans may lose dozens of lives and probably their entire livelihoods. Yet, those culpable will not be herded towards The Hague simple because a mass death by starvation is not an international crime.

This nation has ignored the extreme poverty and desperation of northern Kenya residents, occupying two thirds of the land mass and accounting for a quarter of the population. Frequent droughts have decimated millions of their livestock and rendered them destitute.

Lack of appropriate livestock marketing structure, poor infrastructure – roads, water, and electricity – and inadequate resource allocation has exacerbated deprivation and made residents dependent on famine relief handouts. We notice the consequences of this poverty only, such as the cattle rustling, banditry, illiteracy, disease and clan conflicts, and not the underlying causes.

We are quick to spend billions on emergency relief food but lament about lack of money for long term policy interventions that would mitigate the perennial drought. Emergency operations are often preferred as it creates opportunities for shameless rent-seekers. Development priorities to eliminate extreme hunger take the back seat as political patronage drives grandiose projects.

Now our leaders seem too concerned about Somalia rather than the unfolding tragedy at home. The Special Programmes Minister confuses issues when she urges Somali refugees to remain in their country. And so does the Prime Minister when he responds to Parliament about how the drought funds were utilised. The Government does not feed the Somali refugees. Period. The UNHCR and other UN agencies provide for them. In fact, the Government gets paid for hosting them.

So, when our leaders state that refugees have strained our resources, they express profound ignorance. After all, we closed our borders to them three years ago. A new camp built at Ifo remains closed while the refugees suffer in the desert heat in order to satisfy US concerns about security. In 2009, Human Rights Watch published their report titled ‘from horror to hopelessness’ on the plight of these refugees. Last year, they did another gruesome report on massive abuse and persecution of the refugees at the border by our security forces.

Who cares about them? Will the billions already pledged for that country ever get to them? Not when the implementing aid agencies are still based in Kenya.　

The writer is a former MP for Mandera Central and political economist