CRISES IN KENYA
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Despite the government’s evident efforts to provide greater social protections, the research uncovered a sense of a lack of government responsiveness. In Mukuru, porters said that government officials were ignorant of the problems of their community, and women thought the government was distracted by less important issues and wasted money on activities that did not benefit the people. As one woman living with HIV/AIDS explained it: “Instead of the leaders helping us by reducing food prices, they spend money going to tell people that Ocampo [the International Criminal Court prosecutor] should not come [to pursue inquiries against those responsible for the 2008 election violence].”
A Lango Baya woman thought that the government was aware of the food crisis through its local representatives, but that “bad politics and corruption” meant it failed to address the problem. Mukuru people said that their political leaders were only, if ever, accessible just before elections. During times of food insecurity, they were said to distribute relief food along tribal lines or to those closest to the chief. One child asked: “Is there a councilor representing us? Because I have never seen him.” “The other day the government was saying that the hunger problem does not exist. Yet people in Turkana are succumbing to it. Are they [the government representatives] really aware?” Construction worker, Mukuru, 2011
The idea that the government was not accountable for action on hunger emerged in several different forms. The constitutional reforms that established the right to food in law and the responsibility of the government to act to provide it have clearly stimulated popular interest in holding their government to account for failures to act. One woman living with HIV/ AIDS in Mukuru remarked that the new constitution “does not care for the needs of the poor,” but several others commented that the new constitution gave teeth to their demands for food aid. One woman noted: “In the new constitution, we have the right to be provided food by the government. So when we lack food, we camp in the chief office until we are given relief food.”3
For the moment, however, the right to food remains a legal right more than an actual right. After a prolonged period of crisis, the dominant perspective on the food security situation to emerge from these research sites