News stories by Miriam Gathigah, page 11

Gender responsive budgeting becomes important when seen in the background of unpaid but important care work done by women, say delegates to an international meet on aid effectiveness in this South Korean city.

The resettlement of evictees from Kenya’s Mau Forest remains a humanitarian and environmental concern for the country as more than 25,000 people continue to live in camps around the forest.

Kenyan tea and coffee farmers remain disgruntled about the minimal profits they make selling their cash crops, the country’s leading foreign currency earners, as the government receives millions in funding for training and subsidies that most of these farmers are yet to see materialise.

In villages across South Sudan children are being snatched out of their homes in the dead of night, never to see their families again.

On the road between the Kenyan and Somali border lie the dead bodies of children who have succumbed to the famine and the hardships of making the journey from their drought-stricken villages to Kenya.

For the first time ever, the finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars from the current national budget to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.

When Lucy Omollo found out that her husband was HIV-positive six years ago, the couple thought the best way to prevent her from becoming infected with the virus was not to have sex.

While Kenya struggles to cope with the influx of refuges fleeing the drought in Somalia, it is estimated that about 1,300 people arrive daily at the Dadaab refugee camp, the country is facing its own crisis of malnutrition and starvation.

Even at the best of times, obtaining a title deed from the ministry of lands is a difficult process. But as the minister of lands admitted on Jul. 13 that his office is rife with corruption, the disorganisation of this office means Kenyan women are no closer to owning land.

As the country’s inflation rate hits a staggering 14.5 percent — compared to 4.5 percent in December 2010 - Kenyans are struggling to afford basic commodities like maize, amid a shortage of the staple food.