Country: Kenya Source: NGO Refugee Group Please refer to the attached file. Executive Summary The escalation of conflict between Iran and Israel generated significant concern regarding global oil markets, maritime trade routes,…
What the source says
Country: Kenya
Source: NGO Refugee Group
Please refer to the attached file.
Executive Summary
The escalation of conflict between Iran and Israel generated significant concern regarding global oil markets, maritime trade routes, commodity prices and humanitarian supply chains. Given Kenya's reliance on imported petroleum products and an already constrained humanitarian operating environment, the NGO Refugee Group (NRG) undertook a rapid assessment to understand the realized impacts of the crisis on humanitarian operations supporting refugees and host communities across Kenya.
The assessment received responses from ten NRG member organizations operating in Dadaab, Kakuma, Kalobeyei, Nairobi and the wider refugee-hosting and border areas, including Mandera, Lodwar and the Turkana border sub-counties of Kibish and Lokichogio.
The findings indicate that the severe supply chain disruptions initially anticipated have not materialized. What has occurred instead is a substantial and sustained increase in the cost of humanitarian delivery, which has now begun to affect the volume and reach of assistance provided.
The scale of the cost increase is itself a significant finding. All responding organizations (100%) identified fuel prices and transport and logistics costs among the impacts they have experienced, and 90% recorded a measurable increase in fuel costs since April. Half of respondents reported increases of between 15 and 30 per cent, and one organization reported an increase exceeding 30 per cent. One respondent reported generator fuel rising from KSh 178 to KSh 266 per litre, an increase of approximately 49 per cent, while another reported a quarterly fuel budget exhausted within six weeks. For organizations operating under grant budgets agreed before April, increases of this magnitude represent a material reduction in what those budgets are able to deliver.
Fuel availability has emerged as a constraint alongside price. 60% of respondents reported rationing, shortages or supplier delays, concentrated in Kakuma, Dadaab, Lodwar and Mandera. One organization reported complete non-availability in Dadaab, where it currently has no vehicle in operation.
These pressures have begun to affect programme delivery. 80% of organizations reported field movements reduced, rescheduled or pooled, and 60% reported activities scaled down or suspended. This represents a change from the previous assessment, in which organizations were largely absorbing cost increases through operational efficiency without reducing delivery.
What has been reduced matters as much as how much. The activities scaled down or suspended include protection, border and detention monitoring; health and nutrition outreach in the border sub-counties of Kibish and Lokichogio, reduced by half; community health services in Kalobeyei, reduced from daily to twice weekly; home visits and counselling sessions in Kakuma; and field monitoring visits by technical teams. Every one of these requires staff to travel out to people. No organization reported cutting a clinic, a distribution point or any other service delivered from a fixed site. In effect, organizations have protected the services people come to and cut the services that go to people — and it is the latter that reach households who cannot travel, and that identify need before it arrives at a service point.
Financial pressure is compounding these effects. 70% of respondents reported that exchange rate volatility is affecting operations and 60% reported budget pressure, while 40% reported existing grants under review or paused. Notably, only 10% reported new funding constraints communicated by donors, indicating that the principal problem is not the withdrawal of funding but the erosion of its value. Among the five organizations delivering cash or voucher assistance, all reported erosion in the real value of transfers, and 60% of them have not yet adjusted transfer amounts.
The effects are extending into the communities served. 50% of respondents reported negative coping strategies at community level, including early marriage, child labour and survival sex; 40% reported increased tensions between refugee and host communities; and 20% reported signals of secondary displacement. 80% reported observing or anticipating food security spillover into host communities, and two organizations reported deterioration in nutrition indicators, including rising SAM admissions in Kakuma and Dadaab.
These findings carry an implication for the evidence base itself. Protection monitoring capacity has been reduced at the same time as protection concerns are rising, and nutrition outreach has been reduced at the same time as nutrition indicators are deteriorating. The figures reported in this assessment should therefore be understood as a lower bound, and the response's capacity to detect further deterioration is diminishing.
Organizations have responded with considerable adaptability, through pooled and consolidated movements, hybrid working arrangements, reduced generator runtime, joint procurement and proactive donor engagement. However, the most frequently reported mitigation measure is programme scope reduction, adopted by 60% of respondents, while 30% have implemented hiring freezes and 10% have drawn on reserves. The latter measures cannot be repeated in a subsequent cycle.
Overall, the assessment demonstrates that a geopolitical shock originating outside the region has translated, within four months, into measurable reductions in humanitarian service delivery in Kenya. Sustaining current levels of assistance will require humanitarian financing that reflects the actual cost of delivery, and specific attention to the outreach and monitoring services that are being cut first.
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