Humanitarian efforts still hampered

The UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, hopes that the violence will stop as soon as possible.

“We reinforce the need for accountability for those responsible for that violence, which is why the United Nations is helping not only on the humanitarian side but helping in the political process as far as it can," Holmes addressed the press early this week as the African Union-mandated mediation efforts entered what has been described as a "crucial stage".

The mediation, headed by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan is trying to reconcile the government and the opposition with the aim of reaching a political solution to the crisis. Yesterday, there appeared to be a misunderstanding after Kofi Annan addressed the members of parliament and hinted that the two sides had agreed on a grand coalition with the government side saying that they never agreed on that yet.
If the stalemate is not going to be solved immediately, this may hamper the humanitarian efforts that are going on.

During his visit, Holmes visited camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in western Kenya's Rift Valley Province, to survey the humanitarian situation in areas hardest hit by post-election violence.

Holmes spent some time in Nakuru and Molo and in some of the sites around Nairobi, Tigoni, the Nairobi Showground and Kirathimo. I met a lot of people in a very sad and tragic and moving psychological state, people from communities who have been driven from their homes and often in scenes of great brutality and danger and stress."

Holmes said the country's humanitarian problem remained "serious", from what he saw and the people he talked to. It is now estimated that at least 1,000 people have been killed and more than 300,000 others displaced since the violence began in late December 2007.

These are the recorded cases but it is also possible that there are many other people people who have been "displaced from their homes, are being displaced from their homes, who are not in camps, who have gone to their ancestral homes, who are living with relatives, who are living with host communities, who are living with neighbours and, therefore, who are not included at the moment in the count of people who are in camps but who are no less in need of physical help, psychological help and all the help we can give", Holmes said. In this kind of situation, Holmes noted that host communities were also affected as their resources were strained.

"We need to have all these factors in mind when we are looking at the response we need for the immediate moment but also for the medium term," he said.

Meanwhile, a fact-finding mission deployed by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, is already in the country to investigate allegations of grave rights violations in the post-election period.

According to a report carried by UN News, staff from the office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide are to examine the ethnic dimension of the conflict, as well as the extent to which the ethnic violence was organised.

"They're going out into the field where violence has taken place to see exactly what is going on or has gone on and to give us a picture of whether there has been incitement, by whom and where responsibility lies,” Special Adviser Francis Deng was quoted as saying.

A UN Situation Report on 9 January 2008 stated that the humanitarian situation remained critical in the flashpoint areas of Rift Valley, Western and Nyanza provinces, as well as in slum areas of major cities. It said UN and NGO distribution of food relief and non-food items was continuing and that the protection of children was a priority for the humanitarian community.