KENYA: UNICEF appeals for funds for children in drought-hit areas

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 12 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for US $4 million to fund operations to help tens of thousands of children who are either malnourished or at risk of malnutrition in drought-affected districts of Kenya.

Some of the required funds would finance an ongoing polio immunisation campaign made necessary by the recent outbreak of the crippling disease in Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, which border Kenya, Sara Cameron, UNICEF-Kenya communications officer said on Wednesday.

Working with the government and other organisations, UNICEF-supported assessments had shown that more than a quarter of children in the northeastern district of Mandera, and more than one in every five children in the vast northern district of Turkana, were acutely malnourished.

"Children and families in northern Kenya are caught in a tragic struggle between the forces of nature, lack of development and sporadic outbreaks of violence," Heimo Laakkonen, UNICEF country representative in Kenya, said in a statement.

"We need resources now to provide urgent assistance to 21,000 children facing malnutrition, immunise almost a million vulnerable children against polio and provide water to 100,000 people in critical need," he said.

UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization were supporting an emergency government campaign to vaccinate children in 20 of the most vulnerable districts.

The first round of the campaign started early in October, but funds were still needed for to complete the second round of the polio campaign in November.

UNICEF said it would also use $550,000 to support a forthcoming polio immunisation campaign in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where the exercise had become necessary because of the frequent travel between the city and the neighbouring countries where a polio resurgence had been reported.

Laakkonen praised efforts by the government to broker peace between groups in conflict, but said the risk of violence remained and "the legacy of these brutal attacks marks children for months, years, even for life".

The appeal document said inter-ethnic and inter-clan clan violence in some areas - often politically motivated and related to competition for scarce water resources - had affected children, costing lives and injuries and forcing thousands to abandon their homes.

Laakkonen referred in particular to the brutal attacks in the northern Marsabit district in July, when more than 70 people were killed - including 22 children who were slaughtered at their primary school. In Mandera district, 22 women and children from one clan were killed in March in a raid by a rival clan. Many more were injured and were forced to flee from their homes.

[ENDS]