Cash-transfer giving life-line to needy SGBV survivors

The Covid-19 mobile cash transfers project by Oxfam in Kenya and six NGOs targets 120,000 most vulnerable Kenyans living in Nairobi and Mombasa’s informal settlements.

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Needy survivors of SGBV and those at risk of it from Nairobi’s informal settlements have been given a life-line to get them through the Covid-19 situation by Oxfam in Kenya in partnership with six NGOs.
  • Mobile cash transfers, targets 120,000 most vulnerable Kenyans living in Nairobi and Mombasa.
  • In Nairobi, the recipients of the cash transfers are families in Kibra, Korogocho, Mathare, Soweto, Majengo, Gitare, Marigu, Gatina, Viwandani, Lungalunga and Mukuru slums.

Effie is composed and collected as she tries to calm down her uneasy infant as she speaks with me. The toddler calms down, giving her room to comfortably put her anguish of the past weeks into words.

It is close to three months since the 30-year-old mother and her baby moved into a safe house in Nairobi that shelters survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).  

One evening in April, she recalls, her partner came home at a village in Kawangware where they lived with her six-year-old child and ejected the little girl stating he was not ready to fend for her.

Jobless and pregnant, she took the little one to the biological father - a single man she describes as wanting as a parent. She needed the peace of mind and the financial support from her spouse, particularly during her pregnancy, she explains.

Became abusive

“But it did not work out.  He became very abusive demanding that I procure an abortion. When I resisted, he became very violent,’’ Effie says.

Initially, the family of three lived a fairly normal life, with the man as the breadwinner.  Then Covid-19 struck in mid-March and the government effected restriction measures to control spread of the disruptive disease.  She literally got trapped in the house with a spouse who became more abusive by the day.

“One afternoon, he brought home a concoction of drugs and tried to coerce me into taking it to purportedly induce an abortion,’’ she intimates.

“When he failed to force the mixture down my throat, he viciously attacked me. After I became unconscious, he fled leaving me for the dead,’” Effie remembers. She was rescued by neighbours and taken to hospital.

Start afresh

A series of life struggles and now more than two months later, Effie can afford a smile as she strives to push that awful experience into the past and start life afresh.

“I have been taking tailoring courses here to add to my hair-dressing skills because I am about to leave the shelter and take charge of my life and that of my two children” she says. Effie also has some money she has since saved during the stay.

Good luck came her way through intervention of the Centre for Rights Education Awareness (CREAW), which rescued her from the desperate situation, referred her to the shelter and provided her with financial assistance and has ensured she gets psychosocial support.

She is among hundreds of needy survivors of SGBV and those at risk of it - mostly intimate partner violence - from Nairobi’s informal settlements. They have been given a life-line to get them through the Covid-19 situation, courtesy of a social protection project fronted by Oxfam in Kenya in partnership with six NGOs.

Funded by the European Union (EU), Danish (Danida) and German (German Federal Foreign Office) governments, the consortium’s Covid-19 Safety-Nets in form of mobile cash transfers, targets 120,000 most vulnerable Kenyans living in Nairobi and Mombasa’s expansive informal settlements. The recipients consist of households unable to meet their basic necessities during Covid-19 due to reduced or loss of their sources of livelihood.

Safety nets

The consortium comprises Oxfam in Kenya, The Kenya Red Cross Society, Concern Worldwide, IMPACT Initiatives, Acted, Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness (CREAW) and The Wangu Kanja Foundation. Their mobile (M-Pesa) cash transfers beneficiaries include 1, 445 survivors of SGBV and those at risk in Nairobi and about 2,200 in Mombasa.

Other vulnerable groups specifically targeted for the safety nets are pregnant and lactating mothers, the elderly, the disabled, the chronically ill, orphans and struggling domestic workers. 

Speaking at the signing of a Sh310 million grant by The Royal Danish Embassy in Nairobi to provide cash transfer support to 40,000  vulnerable Kenyans in July,  Matthew Cousins, Oxfam Kenya’s Humanitarian Systems Strengthening Director observed: “Women continue to face unconscionable violence and this has increased since the pandemic. The grant from the Danish government will extend support to vulnerable households in Mombasa, whilst enabling an increased focus on supporting survivors of sexual-and-gender-based violence.”

EU Ambassador for Kenya Simon Mordue observed that providing a lifeline for the most affected people in vulnerable households at the informal settlements was key in countering the worst effects of the nasty Covid-19. 

Elderly people at the launch of Inua Jamii Cash Transfer Program at Mweiga stadium in Nyeri County  in 2017. The Covid-19 mobile cash transfers initiative complements the government of Kenya’s flagship national safety net program, Inua Jamii. 

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

In Nairobi, the recipients of the cash transfers are families in Kibra, Korogocho, Mathare, Soweto, Majengo, Gitare, Marigu, Gatina, Viwandani, Lungalunga and Mukuru slums. In Mombasa, the beneficiary needy households, in addition to 2,280 SGBV survivors, are drawn from all the county’s informal settlements, according to Mr Mohammed Rajab, the Red Cross Society’s Coordinator for Mombasa.

Ms Wangechi Wachira, CREAW’s executive director and her Wangu Kanja Foundation counterpart, Ms Wangu Kanja, describe the mobile cash transfers as the most appropriate method particularly, for survivors of different forms of gender-based violence.

“It is more dignified, has more privacy and allows them the independence to determine their priorities and that of their families,” says Ms Wachira.

The two women rights organisations identify and enrol survivors and those at risk of SGBV into the mobile cash transfer Covid-19 safety-net program and alongside Oxfam, ensure prevention and response measures.  The Kenya Red Cross Society, on the other hand enrols and verifies the most vulnerable families in targeted informal settlements in Nairobi and Mombasa.

Informal settlements

Ms Kanja notes that most of such women who get out of their abusive relationships, move to other villages within the informal settlements to start small businesses.  

“The mobile cash transfer (program) has restored dignity to these survivors.  The discretion gives them the power to make decisions on how to better their lives,” she observes.

Miriam, a beneficiary GBV survivor and mother of two agrees.  Soon after Covid-19 happened, she lost her hotel job. Her spouse became violent and abusive, at one time attempting to kill her as he tried to throw her and the kids out of the home also at a Kawangware village, claiming she would infect him with the coronavirus. 

Cash transfers

She left with the children and into the unknown. Luckily, through CREAW, she became one of the mobile cash transfer’s recipients. Since August, Miriam has paid house rent and bakes mandazi for sale within the neighbourhood.

 “With this money, I am able to prioritise our needs and provide for my children,” Miriam says. “We now can afford a smile and are hopeful. I am at peace.”

The Covid-19 mobile cash transfers initiative complements the government of Kenya’s flagship national safety net program, Inua Jamii. Run by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, Inua Jamii has enrolled about 11,250 vulnerable families in Nairobi’s informal settlements who receive a Sh2,000 monthly M-Pesa transfer.  

The consortium then tops up with a complimentary of Sh5,668 to make a total of Sh7,668 per recipient.  Those not with Inua Jamii receive a monthly Sh7,668. The money is aimed at helping the beneficiaries meet at least  50 per cent of their basic necessities such as food, rent, water, soap and phone credit.

Gender assessment

Although women are majority recipients in the M-Pesa transfer project, men too, do within the same target group.

“Before we carry out any program, we do a gender assessment,” Ms Ruth Oloo, Gender Specialist at Oxfam in Kenya says.

Evans Momanyi, a 32-year-old father from Kibra is one such beneficiary. When Covid-19 befell Kenya, Mr Momanyi lost his job as a driver.  With the deadly pandemic, getting a new job was an uphill task.  Providing for a family of four children and a wife became a challenge. The family had to cut down on meals, reducing them to once daily.  Sometimes, man and wife would sacrifice their ration so that their children could have enough.

“Before the Coronavirus, I would make between Sh500 and Sh1,000 per day,” said Momanyi. “The virus has really affected people who do informal work.”

Fortunately, he got a reprieve in April - a month after losing his job. He received Sh5,641 from the Covid-19 safety nets cash transfer program and was among  625 beneficiaries in the then pilot program.

Covid-19

The EU-funded project was later expanded to cover at least 80,000 vulnerable individuals from Nairobi’s informal settlements, to help them afford basic necessities during the coronavirus period since June.

Although some of the restriction measures have been relaxed, economic hardships instigated by Covid-19 continue to hit Kenyans such as those targeted by the Covid-19 safety nets initiative, the hardest.

A rapid gender assessment carried out in the informal settlements in Nairobi by Oxfam in Kenya two months after Covid-19 struck, indicates that 46 per cent of households were headed by women and 54 per cent by men.

However, women-headed families reported a double burden caused by the pandemic.

“With many businesses and jobs affected, they still are expected to provide for their families and carry out care-related chores in their households,” says the report.

Economic tension

On gender violence in the informal settlements, the study found that a primary cause of GBV for couples is economic tension due to men’s failure to provide for the family.

“The inability of some men to live up to the gendered expectation of men as income providers can result in intimate partner violence to assert toxic masculinity,” the Gender and Protection Implications in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements report notes.

Consequently, the government’s social protection should be scaled up to cushion families and promote cohesion as well as reduce tensions within the household.