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

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