By Robert Kibet
MANDERA, Kenya, , Feb 10 2026 – Every morning before sunrise, 10-year-old Amina Adan walks away from school and toward a shrinking water pan on the outskirts of Rhamu, Mandera County. By the time her classmates would be opening exercise books, Amina was already balancing a yellow jerrycan almost half her size.

Her mother, Fatuma Adan, says the choice is no longer between education and chores — it is between water and survival.

“When there is no water, there is no food, and there is no school,” Fatuma explains. “The children must help; we don’t make it through the day.”

Amina’s story reflects a widening crisis across Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), where prolonged drought is reversing hard-won gains on poverty reduction, food security, health, and education — core pillars of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

A Drought Stretches Systems Beyond Their Limits

According to Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), Mandera remains in the alarm phase, following repeated rainfall failures that saw the October–December 2025 short rains deliver just 30–60 per cent of the long-term average. Water pans have dried up, pasture has collapsed, and households dependent on pastoralism are rapidly losing their main source of food and income.

National food and nutrition security assessments show that more than 2.15 million people in Kenya’s ASAL counties are currently in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, while over 800,000 children aged 6–59 months require treatment for acute malnutrition. County health officials in Mandera report rising admissions to Outpatient Therapeutic Programmes (OTPs) as families exhaust food reserves and milk production from livestock dwindles.

The crisis is not confined to Kenya. Across the Horn of Africa, the United Nations estimates that nearly 24 million people in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are facing acute water insecurity, following years of recurrent drought and climate shocks. UNICEF warns that 2.7 million children across the region are already out of school due to drought-related displacement, with another 4 million at risk if conditions persist.

“These climate shocks are no longer one-off emergencies,” says a county education officer in Mandera. “They are structural, and they are shaping how — or whether — children grow, learn, and thrive.”

Education Disrupted, Futures Delayed

In Mandera North, schools sit at the front line of the crisis. Teachers describe classrooms thinning out as families migrate in search of pasture and water, taking children with them. Others remain behind but struggle to concentrate amid hunger and exhaustion.

Abdikadir Adan Alio, a county education official in Mandera, says attendance in some drought-affected schools has dropped sharply, with girls disproportionately affected as water collection and household responsibilities fall on them first.

For development experts, the implications go beyond short-term learning loss. Interrupted education weakens human capital, undermines long-term economic productivity, and reduces communities’ ability to adapt to future climate shocks — a direct setback to SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 1 (No Poverty).

“If children miss school year after year, the damage becomes generational,” warns Dr Ali Abdi, a humanitarian education specialist working in northern Kenya.

Health and Nutrition Under Strain

Health workers say drought is accelerating a dangerous cycle of hunger, disease, and vulnerability among children. With water scarce, hygiene suffers, increasing the risk of diarrhoeal diseases that further weaken malnourished children.

At mobile clinics operating in remote parts of Mandera, health teams screen children for malnutrition, provide therapeutic foods, and refer severe cases to stabilisation centres. Many of these services are delivered through partnerships between county governments and humanitarian agencies.

“Early detection is saving lives,” says a nutrition officer involved in outreach programmes. “But the caseload keeps rising, and the distances families travel are growing.”

These pressures directly threaten SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) — goals that had shown gradual progress before climate extremes intensified.

Protection Risks Rise as Coping Mechanisms Fail

As drought erodes livelihoods, families are forced into negative coping strategies. Humanitarian agencies report increased risks of child labour, early marriage, and gender-based violence, particularly in remote settlements where social safety nets are weakest.

Girls are especially vulnerable. When resources run low, education is often the first to be cut.

“Drought doesn’t just take food and water,” says a community leader in Mandera. “It takes safety and dignity from children.”

What Is Working: Integrated, Child-Centred Solutions

Despite the scale of the crisis, evidence from Mandera and other ASAL counties shows that integrated responses can cushion children from the worst impacts and protect progress on the SDGs.

Mobile health and nutrition clinics, supported by county governments and organisations such as UNICEF and Save the Children, are reaching nomadic and displaced families who would otherwise fall outside the health system. These clinics combine nutrition screening, immunisation, and maternal health services, reducing the need for long journeys to fixed facilities.

Cash transfer programmes, implemented by government agencies with support from partners including World Vision, are enabling households to prioritise food, water, and healthcare according to their most urgent needs. Studies show that cash support can significantly reduce negative coping strategies and help keep children in school during shocks.

Meanwhile, investments in water trucking, borehole rehabilitation, and climate-resilient water infrastructure are stabilising access in drought hotspots. Although costly, experts argue these interventions are essential to safeguarding SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and preventing repeated humanitarian emergencies.

Community-based approaches are also proving effective. Trained volunteers conduct nutrition screening at the household level, identifying at-risk children early and linking families to services before conditions deteriorate.

“These interventions work best when they are combined,” says a humanitarian programme manager. “Health alone is not enough. Water, food, income, and protection must move together.”

The Challenge of Scale and Sustainability

While these programmes are saving lives, gaps remain. Funding cycles are often short, and responses remain largely reactive rather than preventive. Local officials say scaling up climate-resilient livelihoods — such as drought-tolerant agriculture, livestock insurance, and alternative income sources — is critical to breaking the cycle.

Development analysts warn that without sustained investment, drought will continue to erode gains across multiple SDGs, forcing repeated emergency responses that are more costly in the long run.

“The question is not whether drought will return,” says Eunice Koech, a climate expert at IGAD. “It is whether systems will be strong enough to protect children when it does.”

Childhood at a Crossroads

Back in Rhamu, Fatuma Adan hopes her daughter will return to school full-time when conditions improve. For now, survival comes first.

“I want Amina to learn,” she says. “But first, we must live.”

As climate shocks intensify across the Horn of Africa, the stakes could not be higher. Without coordinated, long-term action, drought will continue to steal not just water and food — but childhood itself, undermining global commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);  

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 2026 – New findings from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveal that millions of children are having their images manipulated into sexualized content through the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), fueling a fast-growing and deeply harmful form of online abuse. The agency warns that without strong regulatory frameworks and meaningful cooperation between governments and tech platforms, this escalating threat could have devastating consequences for the next generation.

A 2025 report from The Childlight Global Child Safety Institute—an independent organization that tracks child sexual exploitation and abuse—shows a staggering rise in technology-facilitated child abuse in recent years, growing from 4,700 cases in the United States in 2023 to over 67,000 in 2024. A significant share of these incidents involved deepfakes: AI-generated images, videos, and audio engineered to appear realistic and often used to create sexualized content. This includes widespread “nudification”, where AI tools strip or alter clothing in photos to produce fabricated nude images.

A joint study from UNICEF, Interpol, and End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) International examined the rates of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) circulated online across 11 countries found that at least 1.2 million children had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year alone. This means roughly one in every 25 children—or one child in every classroom—has already been victimized by this emerging form of digital abuse.

“When a child’s image or identity is used, that child is directly victimised,” a UNICEF representative said. “Even without an identifiable victim, AI-generated child sexual abuse material normalises the sexual exploitation of children, fuels demand for abusive content and presents significant challenges for law enforcement in identifying and protecting children that need help. Deepfake abuse is abuse, and there is nothing fake about the harm it causes.”

A 2025 survey from National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) studied the public’s attitudes toward deepfake abuse, finding that deepfake abuse had surged by 1,780 percent between 2019 and 2024. In a UK-wide representative survey conducted by Crest Advisory, nearly three in five respondents reported feeling worried about becoming victims of deepfake abuse.

Additionally, 34 percent admitted to creating a sexual or intimate deepfake of someone they knew, while 14 percent had created deepfakes of someone they did not know. The research also found that women and girls are disproportionately targeted, with social media identified as the most common place where these deepfakes are spread.

The study also presented respondents with a scenario in which a person creates an intimate deepfake of their partner, discloses it to them, and later distributes it to others following an argument. Alarmingly, 13 percent of respondents said this behavior should be both morally and legally acceptable, while an additional 9 percent expressed neutrality. NPCC also reported that those who considered this behavior to be acceptable were more likely to be younger men who actively consume pornography and agree with beliefs that would “commonly be regarded as misogynistic”.

“We live in very worrying times, the futures of our daughters (and sons) are at stake if we don’t start to take decisive action in the digital space soon,” award-winning activist and internet personality Cally-Jane Beech told NPCC. “We are looking at a whole generation of kids who grew up with no safeguards, laws or rules in place about this, and now seeing the dark ripple effect of that freedom.”

Deepfake abuse can have severe and lasting psychological and social consequences for children, often triggering intense shame, anxiety, depression, and fear. In a new report, UNICEF notes that a child’s “body, identity, and reputation can be violated remotely, invisibly, and permanently” through deepfake abuse, alongside risks of threats, blackmailing, and extortion from perpetrators. Feelings of violation – paired with the permanence and viral spread of digital content – can leave victims with long-term trauma, mistrust, and disrupted social development.

“Many experience acute distress and fear upon discovering that their image has been manipulated into sexualised content,” Afrooz Kaviani Johnson, Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters told IPS. “Children report feelings of shame and stigma, compounded by the loss of control over their own identity. These harms are real and lasting: being depicted in sexualised deepfakes can severely impact a child’s wellbeing, erode their trust in digital spaces, and leave them feeling unsafe even in their everyday ‘offline’ lives.”

Cosmas Zavazava, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), added that online abuse can also translate to physical harm.

In a joint statement on Artificial Intelligence and the Rights of the Child, key UN entities, including UNICEF, ITU, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Commission of the Rights of the Child (CRC) warned that among children, parents, caregivers and teachers, there was a widespread lack of AI literacy. This refers to the basic ability to understand how AI systems work and how to engage with them critically and effectively. This knowledge gap leaves young people especially vulnerable, making it harder for victims and their support systems to recognize when a child is being targeted, to report abuse, or to access adequate protections and support services.

The UN also emphasized that a substantial share of responsibility lies with tech platforms, noting that most generative AI tools lack meaningful safeguards to prevent digital child exploitation.

“From UNICEF’s perspective, deepfake abuse thrives in part because legal and regulatory frameworks have not kept pace with technology. In many countries, laws do not explicitly recognise AI‑generated sexualised images of children as child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” said Johnson.

UNICEF is urging governments to ensure that definitions of CSAM are updated to include AI-generated content and “explicitly criminalise both its creation and distribution”. According to Johnson, technology companies should be required to adopt what he called “safety-by-design measures” and “child-rights impact assessments”.

He stressed however that while essential, laws and regulations alone would not be enough. “Social norms that tolerate or minimise sexual abuse and exploitation must also change. Protecting children effectively will require not only better laws, but real shifts in attitudes, enforcement, and support for those who are harmed.”

Commercial incentives further compound the problem, with platforms benefitting from increased user engagement, subscriptions, and publicity generated by AI image tools, creating little motivation to adopt stricter protection measures.

As a result, tech companies often introduce guardrails only after major public controversies — long after children have already been affected. One such example is Grok, the AI chatbot for X (formerly Twitter), which was found generating large volumes of nonconsensual, sexualized deepfake images in response to user prompts. Facing widespread, international backlash, X announced in January that Grok’s image generator tool would only be limited to X’s paid subscribers.

Investigations into Grok are ongoing, however. The United Kingdom and the European Union have opened investigations since January, and on February 3, prosecutors in France raided X’s offices as part of its investigation into the platform’s alleged role in circulating CSAM and deepfakes. X’s owner Elon Musk was summoned for questioning.

UN officials have stressed the need for regulatory frameworks that protect children online while still allowing AI systems to grow and generate revenue. “Initially, we got the feeling that they were concerned about stifling innovation, but our message is very clear: with responsible deployment of AI, you can still make a profit, you can still do business, you can still get market share,” said a senior UN official. “The private sector is a partner, but we have to raise a red flag when we see something that is going to lead to unwanted outcomes.”

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+’://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, ‘script’, ‘twitter-wjs’);