The Role and the Impact of Food Relief on Human Security: The Case Study of Turkana County in Kenya

Food aid has been the subject of the day especially in famine and crisis prone areas with many people losing their lives as a result of hunger. This may have been as a result of the nature of some places being inhabitable due to the climatic conditions of the place or soil conditions making the place agriculturally unproductive, others may be as a result of political motivations such as civil strife especially in areas where governance in some states is unstable. However, others claim the situation has been that way from the way underdeveloped states are unable to keep pace with the developed nations in terms of technology, making these states to be dependent on developed states to give them close to everything including relief food. This is argued by scholars who posited dependency theory. Development in these areas has rather been too slow especially in upgrading and sustaining agricultural production and diversification of agricultural activities so as to deal with the problem as well has not been well planned. The results of malnutrition and long suffering have led to loss of life and health issues such as diseases. NGOs and other food relief agencies have come in frequently to assist the victims although the desired results have so far not being realized. Turkana being one of the areas has been relying on food aid for over five decades now and still a lot remain to be done to help correct the situation. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to help assess the role and impact that food relief has on human security. The choice of Turkana County is by the fact that it is the largest county in the Arid and semi-arid lands, and for five decades now it has always depended on food relief and due to this dependence human security has been an issue. The study established that draught, poor political policies on food aid and frequent conflict to be the major causes of human insecurity in Turkana county. The food agencies in the county should be of great use in ensuring that the people in Turkana County are assured of frequent food supply throughout the year. Hence, an in-depth examination of the use of relief food was found to have led to over dependence in relief food which has instead distracted people from being active in looking from means of exit from relief food