Emergency aid for pastoralist communities affected by drought

Background

The drought, which has been going on for more than two years, threatens the lives and livelihoods of 4.1 million people in Kenya. Rising inflation isexacerbating the situation even more. Especially the poorest households suffer from a massive deterioration of food security.

The present project targets the Isiolo and Samburu counties. The two counties have experienced extreme poverty, resource conflicts, complex relationships between tribal communities and environmental pressures for many years. In addition, there are weak institutions and infrastructures and insufficient resilience to food crises.

Poor pastures due to the drought have notably decreased the availability of milk. Milk is an important component of the pastoralist diet and is consumed mainly by children, lactating and pregnant women, the elderly and the sick.

VSF-Suisse supports the most at-risk communities with unconditional cash transfers (UCT) to stabilize their household cash and purchasing power to enable them to access food from local markets.

VSF-Suisse also distributes fodder in form of range cubes to vulnerable households which saves their core breeding stock that enables them to rebuild their herds when the conditions start to improve.

In addition, emergency veterinary services are provided to treat sick animals and vaccinate healthy ones.

The goal

VSF-Suisse contributes to improved food and nutrition security for vulnerable drought affected communities in Kenya.

Specific goals are the following:

1. Vulnerable households have increased access to food through unconditional cash transfers and to milk through emergency feeding of core breeding goats
2. The main livelihoods assets of vulnerable pastoralist households are preserved through emergency veterinary services provision. 

Which of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals does this project work towards?

Other projects in the country