Country: Kenya

Human rights, climate change, and climate policies in Kenya

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The study shows how negative impacts of climate change and climate policies threaten basic human rights of the local population, in particular the six villages that were selected for documentation.

Many of the violations of human rights to water, housing and food in the Tana Delta have been found to be due to Kenya’s inherited colonial-like land regulations of the past, which vested the command over natural resources on state and trust land in the hands of the central government and county councils, respectively, without much control by the public or parliament.

The communities affected by agrofuel expansion call for a rights-based approach to development which considers and consults them, and claims to undo past land injustice.

The consulted communities underestimate the problems of local and global climate and environmental change assuming that resolving the land problem, which moves and affects them so deeply, would solve all the resource problems they face. It is, however, an indispensable precondition for improving their human rights situation and their prospects for a sustainable livelihood.

The adoption of the new constitution in August 2010 has the potential to change the situation of Tana Delta inhabitants and other Kenyans, with hoped-for positive repercussions for the respect of human rights by state organs and officials.

Taking into account the voices of the focus groups considered and the processes of legal reform under way in Kenya, the assessment of the impacts of climate change and agrofuel policies on the human rights of Tana Delta’s residents concludes with concrete recommendations both to the Kenyan government and the international community.

Kenya’s Famine – The result of Right to Food violations

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Anton Pieper of FIAN International’s Secretariat, who visited the Kenyan Tana Delta in August this year, reports “Pastoralists from the drought-stricken north take refuge in the Tana Delta, one of the last regions where people have access to water. This exacerbates the existing conflicts  between local peasants and pastoralists, leading to further water shortages, greater pressure on arable land and grazing grounds, and higher food insecurity.”

Droughts are recurrent events in Kenya. However, their frequency is increasing as a consequence of climate change. In the 2009 drought FIAN International and RAPDA, the African Network on the Right to Food, carried out a joint mission to Kenya to investigate the causes of the famine.

The mission found that the food situation in Kenya is deteriorating due to widespread and systematic violations of the human right to food. The hunger situation is further exacerbated by drought. If measures to address the underlying causes had been taken the level of hunger and malnutrition experienced today could have been decreased significantly.

The FIAN report “Kenya’s Hunger Crisis” states that the main human rights violations related to the right to food include failure to provide an operative national strategic plan encompassing disaster preparedness; failure to provide the necessary budget allocations to guarantee the right to food and to ensure that resources are not misdirected or misappropriated i.e. action against corruption; failure to carry out agrarian reform including redistribution of lands; and the failure to  create an institutional environment for the implementation of sustainable agriculture by peasant farmers, including women, youth and minority groups.

The report also pointed to extraterritorial State violations, namely the failure of industrialized countries to effectively curb emissions and take other action to limit climate change, as well their failure to assist Kenya in establishing minimum income systems safeguarding food security for all.

As the violations recognized in 2009  were not effectively addressed the current drought has resulted in widespread famine once more.

Dr. Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights Director at FIAN International states that “blatant violations of the human right to food such as those revealed by FIAN’s famine mission need to be addressed, and those responsible need to be taken to court – nationally and internationally. If the right to food is enforced, recurrent droughts will no longer turn into recurrent famines.”

Further information:

See the Report Kenya’s Hunger Crisis-  the result of right to food violations 

See also the Report Land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique, including a report on the Kenyan Tana Delta, and the effects of landgrabbing on the right to food

Right to Food Quarterly Vol.5 No.1, 2010

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Download here

From the Contents:
*The land is not for sale!
*Mission to the World Trade Organization
*The impacts of climate change on human rights
*The CFS – platform for global governance of food security
*Kenya: Landmark decision on indigenous people's rights
*India's National Food Security Act: prospects and challenges
*Right to Food and Nutrition Watch 2010
*New publications

Editor: Wilma Strothenke

Published by FIAN International

September 2010

Fair Flowers on Mother’s Day!

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“Especially on Mother`s Day everyone should only buy fair produced flowers,” says Steffi Neumann from Vamos e.V. Münster, Germany. Marketa Novotna from Ecumenical Academy Prague, Czech Republic explains: “Approximately 200.000 workers are employed by the flower industry around the equator e.g. in Kenia, Uganda, Colombia, Ecuador; 70% of them are women. Drilling, weeding, tending of plants, cutting and grading are women’s work in the flower industry.”

Living and working conditions of flower workers who produce cut flowers in countries around the equator are very precarious. International recognized human and workers rights are often violated: low wages neither provide a proper living, the rights to organise and collective bargaining, nor the right to occupational health and safety, as they are violated by the flower farms. Especially women have to suffer sexual assaults by male supervisors. Many of them are single mothers.

“Female workers face a double burden” mentions Sophie Vessel from FIAN Austria. “They are often the sole breadwinner of their families. In high season – e.g. for Mother`s Day – they have to work up to 16 hours a day. After work they have to take care of their children and the household.” Gertrud Falk from FIAN Germany adds: “Due to the low income many of the workers’ children have to work to support their families.”

“The Flower Label Program (FLP) and Fairtrade are two labels which guarantee the compliance of workers rights in the flower production. Everyone should ask his or her flower trader for fair produced flowers! Therefore you contribute to better living and working conditions of the mothers who work in the greenhouses!” explains Barbara Janssens from Netwerk Bewust Verbuiken, Belgium. “Flowers are to give pleasure – both, to mothers in the North and the South!” agrees Stephanie Lécharlier from FIAN Belgium.

More info: www.flowers-for-human-rights.org

New FIAN report on landgrabbing in Kenya and Mozambique

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Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land grabbing has been happening largely outside public scrutiny. It has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society.

FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forest or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. “People are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times”, says Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights Director at FIAN International.

“Land grabbing denies land for local communities, destroys livelihoods, reduces the political space for peasant oriented agricultural policies and distorts markets towards increasingly concentrated agribusiness interests and global trade, rather than promoting sustainable peasant agriculture for local and national markets and for future generations”, says Sofia Monsalve, expert on Access to Land and Natural Resources with FIAN International. “It will also accelerate eco-system destruction and the climate crisis. Land grabbing violates human rights”, concludes Monsalve.

Kenya’s Hunger Crisis – the Result of Right to Food Violations

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Heidelberg, 15.03.2010 – “Kenya’s Hunger Crisis – the Result of Right to Food Violations” is the title of a report launched today by FIAN International and RAPDA. These words also capture the main findings of a mission report by a joint international delegation of the African Network on the Right to Food (RAPDA) and FIAN International.  The mission was carried out in September 2009 and investigated the implementation of the human right to food against the background of drought and wide-spread famine in some parts of the country.

Although the severity of the famine was exacerbated by a lack of rainfall as well as the after-effects of the post-election violence of 2007, there are a number of underlying structural problems that ensure that drought and man-made emergencies lead to famine. These include the high level of inequality in Kenya, exclusion of the poor and vulnerable groups from the social, economic and political spheres, widespread corruption and nepotism, a lack of investment in sustainable agriculture and a fragmented and contradictory legislative and policy framework.

“In these contexts, the Kenyan government is failing to adhere to its obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other international and regional human rights instruments.”, says Abigail Booth, Vice President of FIAN International and one of the authors of the report.

The report reveals underlying failures to address the country’s food insecurity. A brief overview of the international, regional legal and policy frameworks relating to the right to food is provided. A view of the confused legislative and policy climate in Kenya is given. Certain policy developments at the national level that could provide a way forward if followed-up are highlighted.

Challenges to the fulfilment of the right to food are illustrated through four case studies from different areas of the country. “The findings point to the extensive nature of food insecurity in the country leaving few communities untouched”, explains Sheikh E.T.Lewis, the Deputy Coordinator of RAPDA.  “They also bring to light a number of violations of the right to food that serve to prolong and deepen the hunger situation in Kenya.”, Sheikh Lewis concludes.