Women and girls as young as 12 from Kenya’s countryside are being forced into sex work to support families affected by prolonged drought. They have little or no education and travel at least 50 kilometers (30 miles) to reach urban areas, working in unsafe conditions far from their homes.

“Since I was raped, I entered into prostitution, because I saw that is something that my family depends on,” a 24-year-old mother told the International Rescue Committee (IRC). “It is not something good, but the need to care for these children is what forces me, because I don’t have anywhere else to run to,” the woman said.

The IRC has been working in Turkana, a region in northwestern Kenya with over 276,000 people in need of food assistance. Turkana, which borders both Uganda and South Sudan, also suffers from Kenya’s second-highest HIV infection rate, according to Mercy Lwambi, the women’s protection and empowerment manager for IRC.

The impact of drought on rural communities such as those in Turkana’s countryside can be particularly harsh. In addition to soaring food prices, rural families face decimated livestock and diminished crops. With grim prospects for survival and a dire need for money, young girls find themselves in early marriages, child labor and forced prostitution.

Rampant abuse

As crippling drought lingers, survival sex, in particular, has proliferated. Child sex workers in Turkana make, on average, about 50 shillings, or less than 50 cents, per client. But it’s not uncommon for no payment to be made or for money to be stolen from the girls.

“Most of the time, their clients steal the little money they give them. So, their clients pay them for the work, then beat them up or take the money, or their clients intoxicate them with alcohol and have sex without pay,” Lwambi said.

Without a support system, girls trapped in sex work face the constant risk of beatings, psychological abuse and sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV.

In addition to prostitution, the IRC has also documented an uptick in gender-based violence and the rape of children, underscoring how humanitarian crises disproportionately affect girls.

Helping with support, information, protection

Until root causes are addressed, IRC acknowledges that eradicating survival sex isn’t realistic. So, they focus on providing support, information and protection. Outreach activities include a mix of clinical care and psychological assistance.

Education on safe sex practices is central to IRC’s work, and helping girls look out for one another is another important strategy.

“So telling them to work in groups if they have work, to work in groups so that, if they are two or three, the chances of them being taken advantage of by a client…is reduced,” Lwambi said.

Slow government response

The government of Kenya needs to do more to protect young girls ensnared in sex work, according to Lwambi.

Subsidies could go a long way toward protecting Kenya’s most vulnerable populations, Lwambi said.

“For sex workers, the girls engaged in sex work, we are looking for the government to provide for these families for food or safety net programming so that they’re able to have resources to be able to take care of their daily needs,” she said.

The government has money to spend, but funds aren’t necessarily diverted into social programs. Kenya just held its most expensive election, and “the public and private spending [were] both at an all-time high,” according to Quartz, a digital news source.

An old problem

Child prostitution fueled by poverty is not a new problem in Kenya.

In 2008, the United Nations Children’s Fund estimated that 30 percent of girls in coastal Kenya were forced into prostitution. More recently, in 2014, Reuters reported that “in Nairobi’s overcrowded slums, hungry children often trade their bodies for a few coins or food.”

The facilitation of child prostitution and child sex tourism in Kenya were not criminalized until 2006, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report. The report went on to state that “girls and boys are exploited in commercial sex throughout Kenya, including in sex tourism in Nairobi, Kisumu, and on the coast, particularly in informal settlements; at times, their exploitation is facilitated by family members.”

Drought conditions ease

Drought conditions show some signs of easing. The most recent Early Warning Bulletin for Turkana county by Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority found that recent rainfall will raise water levels, improve vegetation and benefit the condition of livestock, improving the overall food security picture.

The U.S.-funded Famine Early Warnings Systems Network forecasts that conditions in Kenya will shift toward minimal and stressed levels of food insecurity, the lowest levels on their scale, from October to January. However, much of Turkana will continue to experience crisis levels of food insecurity.

Meanwhile, funding shortfalls have hindered humanitarian organizations in every country affected by prolonged drought and severe food insecurity. For the IRC, that’s meant cutting back on their support programs and laying off staff.

“Donors should reinstate funding now, supporting girls to get out of commercial sex work and have better and safer opportunities to feed themselves and their families,” said Conor Phillips, Kenya country director at the International Rescue Committee.
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The warring factions in South Sudan and the country’s neighbors must leave no stone unturned in finding a political solution to the three-and-a-half-year civil war.  That was the message of the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as he wrapped up his visit to South Sudan and neighboring Uganda.

Peter Maurer has visited conflict zones around the world, including Syria and Yemen.  The International Committee of the Red Cross president paints a grim picture of what he has just seen in South Sudan, one in two people is severely hungry and dependent on food aid, while one in three people is displaced.

ICRC’s Maurer said returning to dialogue is the only solution.

“I have seen the alternative of it, and the alternative of it looks bleak,” Maurer said. “That is a continuation of the conflict.  It is people being afraid, people not having any trust, people fleeing before even the fighters are coming because they are scared to death that any fighter coming to a village comes with violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and so this is not an acceptable solution.”

Violence has intensified in South Sudan since July of last year after a power-sharing deal between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar collapsed.

International human rights bodies say warring factions have perpetrated gross human rights abuses against civilians, including gruesome killings, abductions of adolescent boys and girls, and rapes of women and young girls.

The ICRC says the number of wounded treated in ICRC-supported hospitals is significantly higher this year than last year, and health care workers continue to come under threat.  The number of family members separated by conflict and reunited by the ICRC has already more than doubled this year compared with 2016, to nearly four dozen, including many children.

“People, when they see us, they also they want food, water, sanitation and health services, but they also first and foremost ask us where are our relatives?,” Maurer said.

Uganda welcomed its one millionth South Sudanese refugee this month.  Nearly all of them arrived in the past year.

Maurer visited refugee settlements in northern Uganda and planned to meet Monday with Ugandan president, and regional heavyweight, Yoweri Museveni.  

“President Museveni knows himself what to do, and if we come to the conclusion that there is no military solution to the problem, you better reinforce and redouble your efforts at the political side, and we have to have national, credible, inclusive national dialogue,” Maurer said.  

Museveni’s role in regional mediation efforts in the past has been controversial, with the SPLA/IO rebels accusing him of backing the government of Salva Kiir.

But the few precursors to potential peace talks that have taken place recently have been held in Uganda, and some groups in the conflict think Museveni could use his influence to mediate an end to the violence.
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Nigerian activist, Rebecca Dali has won the prestigious Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation award for her work in re-integrating women and orphans abducted by Boko Haram militants into their home communities.

The award was presented at a ceremony Monday commemorating World Humanitarian Day (August 19) at the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva.

It is given every two years in memory of Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a terrorist attack on August 19, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq, along with 21 others.  The prize aims to draw world attention to the courageous, often unnoticed, humanitarian work of an individual, group or organization in areas of conflict.

“Rebecca Dali is a very courageous woman in a corner in Africa, in northeastern Nigeria, who is doing work under very difficult circumstances,” said Anne Willem Bijleveld, the chairman of the board of the de Mello Foundation.

He told VOA that some of the women and girls who are liberated want to return to their communities, but their communities and families often do not want them back because they have been raped, have had children, and been subjected to sexual violence by Boko Haram.

“Rebecca Dali did a tremendous job in re-establishing dialogue and reconciliation to get these girls back into their communities, to get them back where they came from and that they can continue with their life again,” Bijleveld said.

Aiding widows, orphans for years

Dali was born on October 1, 1960, the same day Nigeria got its independence.  She overcame extreme poverty in childhood and a rape at age six to earn a Ph.D in later years in ethics and philosophy.

She got married in 1979 to a man who, she said, “allowed me to do what I like to do.”  She has six children.  Her fourth, a son, was lost on August 21, 2011 in the aftermath of the Jos crisis, when clashes erupted between Muslim and Christian ethnic groups.

Dali formed her non-profit organization Center for Caring Empowerment and Peace Initiative in northern Nigeria in 1989 to aid widows and orphans caught in situations of violence, who often struggle to survive.

She has established three Livelihood Centers that teach women marketable skills, such as sewing, computers, and cosmetology.  “When they graduate, we give them seed money so they can start their own business,” she said.

When the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, she turned her attention to the victims of this Islamist radical group.  She told VOA tens of thousands of destitute widows and orphans were left behind when their men were killed.

“In our society, women are not dignified.  Even if their husbands are killed, then the family usually will take away all the things that they own,” she said.  “So, in the Boko Haram, they are double victimized.  So, I train these widows in my Livelihood Centers.”

Dali’s husband, Reverend Samuel Dali, was president of the Church of the Brethren, which was attended by most of the 276 Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram in April 2014.

The government has taken charge of the Chibok girls who have been released, so Dali said her group is focusing on helping the many other women and children who were abducted by Boko Haram.  She said those who managed to escape have been treated as pariahs by their communities.

“They are stigmatized.  People rejected them.  Their husbands rejected them.  The society rejected them.  Their parents sometimes reject them,” she said.  

Dali said her organization has provided the victims with food and shelter and paid for children’s schooling.  She added that the women and girls received trauma care and were encouraged to tell their distressing stories.

“Then, we go and lobby in the society among the local people, so that they will allow them to stay in the society,” she said.  

The award carries a cash prize of about $5,000, which Bijleveld terms “a symbolic amount.”  She may also win more support from the publicity.

Dali said she is heartened by the recognition she and her organization have received from the de Mello Foundation.  “The award came to me as a miracle from God,” she said.  “So, it will urge me to do more.  It is really going to help me,” she said.

 
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Four children from Sudan whose parents are believed to have been killed fighting for Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte last year were handed over to the Sudanese consul on Sunday for return to their country.

Sirte was a stronghold for Islamic State from 2015-2016, when Libyan forces backed by U.S. air strikes ousted the ultra-hardline group. Hundreds of foreign militants joined Islamic State in Sirte.

Dozens of women and children detained towards the end of the fighting have been held in Misrata, the city from which the military campaign in Sirte was led.

They include nationals of Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Senegal, Chad, and Niger. Twenty-one Libyan children have been handed back to their families.

In June, eight children were handed over to the Sudanese authorities and returned to Sudan. Eleven other Sudanese women and children are still in Misrata.

The Red Crescent’s head of psychological support in Misrata, Salah Abuzreba, appealed to all countries “that haven’t responded until this moment to receive those children as a human act, so they can be returned to their relatives”.

 
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