Situation
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Below-average rainfall during the 2016 rainy seasons and the 2017 March-to-May rainy season has led to severe drought and deteriorating food security and nutrition conditions in northern and southeastern parts of Kenya. The 2017 October-to-December rainy season has been above average across most of the country, leading to slight improvements in water and pasture availability for livestock. As a result, food security in some pastoral households is improving to Stressed (IPC 2) levels. However, staple food prices remain high after several consecutive below-average harvests, and the majority of poor pastoral households will likely continue to face Crisis (IPC 3) levels of acute food insecurity through January 2018, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).
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High levels of malnutrition persist, with approximately 370,000 children younger than five years of age and 37,000 pregnant and lactating women experiencing acute malnutrition.
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According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Kenya hosts more than 489,000 refugees. As of October 2017, Kenya hosted more than 286,500 Somalis and 111,000 South Sudanese fleeing conflict and food insecurity in their own countries. While the number of Somali refugees has decreased since 2016 due to repatriations, the number of South Sudanese has increased as insecurity worsens in South Sudan.
Response
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The USAID Office of Food for Peace (FFP) partners with the UN World Food Program (WFP) to provide relief and build resilience among the most vulnerable populations in Kenya. In the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) counties, FFP supports food-insecure Kenyans by providing cash transfers or food in exchange for work on improving community assets, such as rehabilitating local roads or irrigation systems. FFP also provides funding and in-kind, ready-to-use therapeutic foods to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition in the ASALs and among refugee populations in Kenya. FFP provided support to WFP for contingency planning for possible violence and displacement associated with the 2017 Kenyan general elections, as well as supplementary nutritious foods for children younger than five years of age and pregnant and lactating women in areas with the highest levels of acute malnutrition.
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FFP supports refugees living in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps, and their host communities, through direct food distributions, education on maternal and child health, livelihoods training, and supplementary and therapeutic nutritious food. FFP also supports WFP’s refugee operation by providing cash-based transfers for food, support for local procurement of cereals and pulses, and a pilot program to develop refugee-managed milling operations.