Covid pushing us to the edge, let’s pull together to defeat it

This year’s World Humanitarian Day was celebrated on August 19, amidst a humanitarian crisis.

As the world was bracing for the possible spread of the Covid-19 beyond its origins in Wuhan, China, desert locusts were sweeping through swatches of pastureland and cropland in Kenya, in what experts say is the worst invasion in 70 years.

More than 33 counties were experiencing effects of heavy flooding occasioned by higher than normal October-November-December 2019 rains. By the time the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Kenya, communities were already grappling with major humanitarian challenges.

Floods caused more than 300 deaths and displaced at least 600,000 people. Some of those displaced are yet to be resettled and are still living in camps. Beyond the human cost, livelihoods in the form of crops, pasture and livestock were also destroyed.

Forecasts indicate that the effects of the floods will adversely affect food security, as the planting cycles were disrupted. An impact assessment of the desert locusts’ invasion recently conducted by the Kenya Red Cross in collaboration with FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture paints another grim picture for the communities that bore the worst of the invasion.

Preliminary findings indicate that communities will need support to recover from the losses incurred on cropland and pastureland. This, too, will have long-standing effects on food security and livelihoods.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, all efforts are currently on preventing further spread, treating the infected and mitigating the socioeconomic impacts. It is our hope that we can flatten the curve sooner rather than later and get our lives back to normal.

The pandemic is not just a health problem. As the virus continues to spread, the health, psychosocial and economic effects continue to increase. The country has witnessed a sharp increase in mental health challenges, gender-based violence, domestic violence, child abuse and many other social problems.

The prolonged closure of schools has also left millions of children vulnerable, with surveys showing a sharp increase in teenage pregnancies during the last six months.

In the urban centers, thousands of persons living in informal settlements have lost their incomes as employers trim their staff with shrinking businesses, whilst others shut down.

Lost income

Many persons in the informal sector who rely on casual jobs have also lost their sources of livelihoods. Many families have lost income and have been pushed to living below the poverty line in just five months.

This loss of income by people in the informal sector and businesses coupled with the movement restrictions have also affected food production in the rural areas where many small-scale farmers depend on remittances from their relatives in towns to purchase inputs like seeds and fertiliser.

The issues outlined are just a few of the challenges that the humanitarian actors have to confront during and beyond the active response to the pandemic. Yet they must do so in a fast changing environment.

Moreover, such crises should be addressed holistically, as they affect the populace in multiple ways - socially, economically, psychologically, and have weakened the communities’ coping mechanisms. To begin with, we should not lose sight of the multiplicity and complexity of the crises on the populations. This means that programming cannot be one-dimensional.

We should employ multiple approaches and address these challenges in an integrated manner to build community resilience and enable them to bounce back.

New technologies, innovative local solutions and research tools offer opportunity for humanitarians to forecast possible crisis that could cripple livelihoods and hold countries or continents at ransom.

Integrated programming based on evidence will help humanitarians work with different actors to mitigate future crisis.  

Additionally, homegrown solutions should be assimilated into the humanitarian response and structures.

It is also critical that affected communities are involved in finding solutions to their own problems.  

Tapping into local resources to advance the response to humanitarian crisis also needs to be incorporated in the functional structures of humanitarian organisations.

Let us celebrate heroes who have dedicated their lives to save and protect lives in the most difficult circumstances amidst numerous challenges and risks. Let us salute them!

-The writer is Secretary General, the Kenya Red Cross