{{Children displaced in the violence that followed Kenya’s 2007 elections are too poor to attend school and are turning to sex work to survive, a senior United Nations expert said this week.}}
Some children are living on the streets while others remain in battered tents issued to their families six years ago, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Chaloka Beyani said at a press conference at the end of a nine-day visit to Kenya.
More than 660,000 people were chased from their homes and 1,200 died in violence that erupted after Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections, fuelled by historical grievances between ethnic communities.
Kenya’s government has bought land to resettle some IDPs and given others cash. But the programme has been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.
“Many IDP [internally displaced] girls, for example … were being exploited sexually because they have no basic livelihood,” Beyani told media.
“There is no space for them to farm at all. So they find their own livelihoods in terms of going into the town and doing what they have to do.”
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