April 25, 2008

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Thursday April 24, embarked on a three-day peace tour of the Rift Valley. Top on their agenda was to lay ground for the resettlement of the internally displaced persons who are presently living in pitiable conditions in various camps in the region including schools and showgrounds.

But even as the President and the Prime Minister hit the road, Kenyans will be hoping that indeed the exercise of resettling the IDPs takes the shortest time possible. There is already concern that the situation of women and children living in camps is at best, agonizing.

It was no coincidence that this week, Dr. Naomi Shabaan, Special Programmes Minister and Ms Sophia Noor, nominated Member of Parliament echoed the plight of this group of people when they called upon parliament to put this issue as priority to its order of business.

The question of immediately resettling the displaced persons makes great sense now than ever before especially that the alarm bells have been sounded to the effect that the country’s food situation is dire. A move to return the nearly 350, 000 persons will see them get back to working on their farms. This would help reverse the food situation in the country which is already taking a turn for the worst and raising serious concern.

The food crisis in the country has resulted into sharp rise of prices on cereals. This consequently would lead to starvation-related deaths, particularly among children. The prices of basic commodities are soaring leading to progressive diminishing access to food for the poorer sections of the population a large section of whom are now resident in the camps. The vulnerable people, particularly women and children are profoundly afflicted.

This circumstance considered, it is of absolute necessity that the many people camping in various showgrounds, schools and police stations should unconditionally be returned to their homes to enable them forge on with the business of nation building. We have in mind the women living in camps who are predominantly farmers in the regions where they hail from.

Away from the question of food situation, these women-our mothers, sisters, and daughters- are now highly prone to sexual violence than ever before. Recent media reports have painted a grim picture of the situation prompting intervention from various stakeholders including the Nairobi Women’s Hospital, DNA Solutions, and corporate organisations.

Statistics released by Nairobi Women’s Hospital, Gender Violence Recovery Centre in March this year just went further to inform how urgent it was to deal with the situation of women living in IDP camps. The study estimated that 300 women had been treated for rape since the post election violence; many of them had traveled from the Rift Valley Province to the capital.


Owing to the distance between Nakuru and Nairobi, it was observed that the women arrived too late for post-exposure prophylaxis, which can prevent HIV infection following exposure, but received post-trauma counselling and treatment for other injuries.

Then there are reports of sexual coercion and exploitation of girls and women by people in positions of responsibility or power. There were reports of Nakuru community members taking girls from the camp to serve as house helps. This essentially increases the risk of sexual exploitation.

As the situation persist, women in Kenya are joining hands in supporting Hon members of parliament, Dr. Naomi Shabaan and Sophia Noor that the IDPs should be resettled, but not only that , but that the resettlement strategy should put into consideration the most vulnerable IDPs who in this case include women and children and the disabled.