Obama's cousin Odinga not handeling things so well.

Kenya: Food security emergency in Nairobi slums threatens four million.

Let us not forget that Obama rallied very hard in Kenya (on the American taxpayers dime) for his cousin Odinga to take over Kenya. When he lost a valid election the Country started revolts where Christians were massacred. Of course Obama himself was never bothered in a place where they were killing Christians everywhere. Is he a Muslim, probably so. regardless, this is the government that he helped set up as a better choice.
BTW - Odinga used the same phrases of "hope and change" when he ran for election in Kenya. Shall we see the change that the Kenyan people got?

Four million people living in the grinding poverty of Nairobi's huge and overcrowded urban slums are on the brink of a massive food crisis. Because these people are already so poor and their living conditions already so bad, this deadly threat is hard for the outside world to see. Concern launched a report with evidence of this crisis that demands an immediate response – before it is too late.





Concern found that there is no international criteria for defining the point at which chronic poverty tips into an emergency in densely populated urban contexts. Getting information on rates of malnutrition and the impact of rising food costs in the slums was a struggle: there was no one source or repository of information. And there is no coordination mechanism within Kenya for the slums. Concern teamed up with NGOs Oxfam and Care to get a more exact analysis about current conditions in the slums, fearing that the international standard for measuring malnutrition rates did not transfer accurately in this densely populated area. Under normal circumstances, malnutrition rates of at least 15 percent in a specific geographic area qualify as a humanitarian emergency. But in the densely populated slums, this would mean hundreds of thousands of severely malnourished children, which neither NGOs nor the government could handle.

Concern, Care and Oxfam launched the report, and Concern's Country Director in Kenya, Anne O'Mahony, has been talking to government and donors to try and get the crisis in Nairobi's slums on the agenda.

O'Mahony says, "We have learned that the international standard for signaling a nutrition emergency does not apply in Nairobi's slums: if we waited till we had evidence of reaching that standard, it would already be too late. We must act now."

RISING FOOD COSTS & SHRINKING INCOME

Maize, the staple diet of many in the slums, has risen in price by more than 133 percent in the last year, forcing families to survive on just one meal a day. Because incomes have not changed, at least two million people in Kibera [Nairobi's largest slum] where Concern focuses its work have been tipped over from chronic poverty into an emergency situation. More than 5,000 children under five years old are currently suffering from malnutrition with one-fifth of these suffering from acute malnourishment, and 10,000 mothers and pregnant women are in need proper of nutrition. Food insecurity has been exacerbated by drought and poor harvests. Cooking fuel prices have risen by 30-50 percent, and the cost of water has more than doubled.

Even though the Kenyan government had declared a national food emergency in the country, there was insufficient information about how the recent shocks—in particular rising food costs—had impacted people in the urban slums, but also the HIV and AIDS prevalence and post-election violence. The findings in the joint Concern, Care, Oxfam report confirmed suspicions that the situation has reached a critical impasse.

Increasingly, risky behaviours are being used by the slum population as coping strategies. Begging on the streets has become routine for many, as has combing the rubbish dumps for scraps of food. Up to 30 percent of children have been pulled out of school to work at home, or worse. An alarming spike in youth numbers entering the sex trade is increasing the threat of HIV and AIDS, in an area with already high prevalence rates. Petty and violent crime rates have escalated a fact that is serving to strengthen banned criminal gangs like the Mungiki.

To compound these issues, frequent, unannounced, night-evictions, often involving the complete destruction of property, are making it impossible for slum communities to maintain adequate shelter. Despite a 2007 High Court order barring evictions, the government committed last year to clearing areas up to 30 meters from the river, in efforts to sanitize the Nairobi waterways. Since then, frequent physical abuses and unlawful violations of basic living rights have been widely reported.

CONCERN'S RESPONSE

The crisis in the urban slums is one of access rather than availability, short-term cash transfers rather than aid intervention has been identified as the most appropriate response for reaching the most vulnerable people. Concern has committed to responding through the following actions.

- Distributing emergency cash transfers to the poorest urban families via mobile phone technology

- Providing food subsidies such as food stamps to offset high food prices

Concern is also expanding its emergency nutrition program to identify and treat malnourished slum children.

Country Director Anne O'Mahony and her team will continue to monitor and track the urban food crisis and respond to the needs of the most vulnerable.