International Organization for Migration (Geneva)
15 August 2008
press release
Vulnerable households displaced by post-election violence earlier this year will benefit from transitional shelters thanks to new funding from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
The USD 500,000 contribution will benefit 700 extremely vulnerable families, including persons with serious medical conditions, the elderly, female-headed households and orphans, who for the past eight months have been living in dismal conditions in more than one hundred minimally assisted transit sites.
"In three districts of the North Rift Valley, IOM is carrying out in-depth household assessments through its psychosocial programme to identify particularly vulnerable families," says Jerotich Seii Houlding, IOM's Emergency Response Officer. "Once identified, the families will then be provided with timber-framed, corrugated iron-roofed transitional shelters, which they will occupy as they rebuilt their lives and livelihoods."
The violence, which followed Kenya's disputed general elections in December 2007, led to the displacement of up to 500,000 people and to the destruction of an estimated 40,000 homes.
Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Return Home), which was launched in May following the formation of a Grand Coalition Government, has allowed more than 200,000 IDPs to leave camps and host communities to return to their pre-displacement homes, mainly in the Rift Valley.
However, it is estimated that 60% of all IDPs are returning to damaged or destroyed homes, whilst an estimated 80,000 displaced who cannot return to their lands are forced to live under plastic sheeting in transit sites, which lack the most basic facilities and infrastructures.
IOM is appealing for an additional USD 3, 5 million to provide much needed shelter assistance to an additional 7,000 displaced families.
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