Editor's Note [Volume 21 No. 7 (2021)]

The UNFSS has come and gone. What did achieve? Personally, I did a number of pre-conference sessions many of which I contributed to. My message was always very clear, that we need to focus on people. We need to focus on the vulnerable. We need to focus on working towards world peace at all levels. As countries battle to contain the pandemic, in their individual countries and have failed to link this to mental health and conflict resolution. During a pandemic like one we have never seen before, when few have made so much money by taking advantage of the working class and the hand to mouth working class members of the society.

As I went through the community after 2 years, I still witnessed a lot of suffering. What affected me most was not hunger and poverty due to loss of jobs, but parents being unable to afford school fees for their children. These are mostly children in boarding schools. Yet how can children stay in school without paying school fees, what will they eat at school? That is when people like me are called upon to step in.

The just concluded UNFSS is predicated on the Sustainable Development Goals. GOAL ONE is eradication of poverty. For a long time we have we have talked of eradicating hunger. We do not seem to be succeeding.

To make it worse, climate variability impacts are making worse to sustain a viable food supply. Then the pandemic has just made things worse by pushing a lot of people below the poverty line. To have an enjoyable livelihood we need more than food. Do we not? What does it matter if we have food yet we cannot access quality water, or have no affordable energy supply, we cannot access affordable health care, or we cannot afford school fees for our children? People need cash, they need disposable income.

Ruth Oniang'o
Editor-in-Chief, AJFAND