TEN KENYAN SCHOOL-GIRLS RAPED IN NIGHT PROTEST.

International NewsFlash-Kenya.

A student protest march turned tragic in Kenya when ten school girls were raped by a gang that accosted them as they stormed out of school on Sunday night 0f March 26.

Three of the girls from Kangubiri High School in Nyeri a small rural town in the Central part of Kenya , have been admitted at the provincial general hospital while the other seven are yet to seek help. Of the three, two are in Form One and the third in Form Four.

The ordeal began at 1.30am when all the 700 students broke down the school gate and stormed out to protest against the administration. But they were attacked by the gang right outside the gate where some of them were raped as the others scattered in fright.

"Unfortunately their screams could have been confused with the excited shouts of the protestors," said a Form Three student.

The others fell prey to rapists when they stampeded to the nearby Muthinga Trading Centre and tried to hide, only to fall into the waiting hands of the attackers.

The three girls, who were seriously injured and traumatised, were first taken to a private hospital, but were turned away because they did not have P3 forms from the police.

On Monday March 27, the school’s principal, Mrs Monicah Kagume, refused to discuss both the rape and the protest march.

"I do not want to say anything about what happened, I cannot talk on the phone. Please do not ask me the plight of the girls who were attacked," Mrs Kagume said.

Pressed further, Kagume said she was aware of neither the rape nor the reasons for the walkout. Some students told International NewsFlash they were protesting against the management’s high-handedness and poor diet. They were also demanding that their wake-up time be changed from 4.30am to 5am.

Kagume said all the 700 girls stood suspended and that their parents must report to the school immediately.

Education officers, who visited the school, said investigations showed that "at least 10 girls were raped".

"Their colleagues talked to us freely, but only three have come forward. There is nothing we can do unless the rest come forward," said an officer.

The acting Central Provincial Director of Education, Mr Kennedy Sakwa, said: "The school has 700 students, who went out at night complaining about high handedness, inadequate food and detention of unruly students.

The girls also wanted the wake-up time pushed to 5am from 4.30 am." Another official said he was moved to tears when he talked to one of the girls in hospital.

"The girls are three. There is no denying what has been done to them. One of the girls’ clothes were torn, another’s soiled. We had to close down the school indefinitely," he said.

The hospital’s Medical Superintendent, Dr Victor Muyembe, said the girls were brought in on march 27, Monday morning.

"It is true they have been defiled. I cannot give you more information and neither can I allow you to talk to them. They are in great shock. They are traumatised," he said.

He added that all three had been given anti-retroviral drugs to prevent them from contracting HIV. By 3pm on Monday, several students were stranded in Nyeri Town.

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Improve water efficiency in farming, urges report

Hundreds of millions of people in developing countries will remain trapped in poverty unless major changes are made to the way water is managed for agriculture, say scientists.

In a report released at this week's World Water Forum in Mexico, they say that global demand for food will double by 2050 and — unless farming is made more efficient — so will the amount of water needed to produce this food.

The report, by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and nine partners, challenges researchers to find ways of making farming more water-efficient.

"It takes 70 times more water to grow the food we eat every day than we need for drinking, cooking, bathing and other domestic needs," says IWMI director general, Frank Rijsberman.
The report points out only 40 per cent of rainfall reaches rivers and groundwater.

By focusing on this 'blue water', it says, water managers are ignoring 'green water' — the remaining 60 per cent that is either evaporated directly from the soil or taken up by plants before it reaches rivers and groundwater.

The IWMI says that making better use of green water is essential to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals on poverty, hunger, sanitation and water.

Agriculture can be made more water efficient in developing countries if farmers harvest rainwater or use small scale, inexpensive irrigation technologies, says the report.

For example, perforated plastic tubes laid on the ground can deliver drips of water directly to where it is needed, at the base of planted crops.

The report points out that irrigation systems in Africa and Asia typically take 2,000 litres of water to produce on kilogramme of rice or wheat, whereas the most efficient systems require only 500 litres.

Making fields more efficient at using the irrigation and rainfall they already receive could eliminate the need to irrigate them more, says Rijsberman.

Another "major challenge and opportunity for research" is to find ways of safely using waste-water for farming, says the report.

"Technologies are available but remain largely untested," it adds.The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report on 22 March saying that agriculture is the biggest threat to freshwater resources.

"Irrigated agriculture accounts for 70 percent of freshwater used globally, with only 30 percent of this returned to the environment," said Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesperson.

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