The fight against HIV/AIDS in Kenya got a massive boost this week after the Global Fund released $60 million to help the East African country to combat the virus and malaria. The funds were part of the round seven HIV/AIDS funds of which the government had already received $18,343,450, officials said.

Kenyan children in acute and chronic pain suffer needlessly because of government policies that restrict access to inexpensive pain medicines, a lack of investment in palliative care services, and inadequately trained health workers, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The 78-page report, "Needless Pain: Government Failure to Provide Palliative Care for Children in Kenya," found that most Kenyan children with diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS are unable to get palliative care or pain medicines. Kenya's few palliative care services provide counseling and support to families of chronically ill patients, as well as pain treatment, but lack programs for children.

Hidden Voices: Urban Refugees is a video produced by the International Rescue Committee and MediaServe International. The short film highlights the daily struggles facing thousands of urban refugees living in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi. In their own words, the refugees tell of how they face poverty, harassment and violence as they make their way in the urban environment.

It was social movements that mobilised many poor Kenyans to vote in the referendum, and it is social movements that must mobilise to ensure the country’s new constitution fulfils the people’s hopes for a better future, writes Gacheke Gachihi.

Horticulture stakeholders are looking to negotiate a trade protocol with the European Union (EU) to graduate from the current Lome Convention. Kenya Flower Council Chief Executive Officer Jane Ngige says they want to amend the Lome Convention – under which the EU provides aid and extends trade and tariff preference to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries – in order to secure market access.

An estimated 5,000 refugees troop into the country every month, according to the United Nations. Most of them find their way through the porous Kenya-Somalia border (4,000) to cap the number of foreigners seeking asylum in Kenya at 400,000. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that a contingency plan had already been put in place in case the situation in Somalia worsened.

A day after Kenyans voted to accept a new constitution, women across the country speak about their hopes and expectations.??The case of Elizabeth Chazima could stand for the story of millions of women in Kenya who have been robbed of their financial contributions to matrimonial assets. Speaking from her modest grocery store in Jericho Estate, Nairobi, Chazima recounts how in the early 1990s, her husband sold the house they had bought together without her knowledge.

Kenya is awakening with the realisation of a new constitution. Jill Cottrell Ghai and Yash Pal Ghai warn that Kenyan society must not now allow the silence of complacency to take hold and obstruct the path to democratic and transparent governance. The commitment of the nation’s civil society organisations and movements able to secure the universal implementation of the constitution will ensure its survival, and the upholding of the rights and responsibilities it enshrines for the benefit of Kenyans, write the authors.

Let’s give credit for the overwhelming decision for ‘Yes’ where it belongs – to ordinary Kenyans of all walks of life, writes Ngunjiri Wambugu.

Responses to the results of Kenya’s referendum, Haitian musician Wyclef Jean’s decision to run for president and the dangers of Bill Gates and his foundation dabbling in Africa’s development are among the topics discussed in this week’s roundup of the African blogosphere, brought to you by Sokari Ekine.

Since March 2008, Beatrice Tamaska Kae has lived under a tarpaulin with her seven children in a camp after their eviction from a government forest in Trans Nzoia West district in western Kenya. "It is hard to get used to life in a camp when you had a lot of space before; during the dry season life is slightly better because it is not cold but now with the heavy rains and the cold, it is pure misery, however closely we sit or sleep, we cannot get warm in this weather," Kae said on 29 July at Teldet primary school, in Kissawai location of Saboti Division.

IRIN is pleased to announce the launch of three more chapters in our ongoing series of short films, Kids in the City. The Dump Site tells the story of children who scavenge from the Dandora rubbish tip in Nairobi to survive. Home Alone features a family of four children in the Ugandan capital Kampala who were orphaned by AIDS, while The Weigh Scale introduces 14-year-old Cambodian Chan Sori, who never knew his fathe

Kenyans have overwhelmingly voted in a new constitution, which would redefine the political landscape and make it easy to send a sitting President to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face trial for crimes, including genocide, as part of the East African nation's range of law reforms. Kenya's draft constitution easily sailed through during the 4 August vote, with the provisional poll results Thursday showing at least 67.9 percent of the voters had given it their approval, against 33 percent of the voters who opposed the draft law.

Foreign land barons are using millions of shillings to hire elite law firms for advice on how to protect their property should Kenyans pass the proposed Constitution — that bars them from owning land — in Wednesday’s vote. Commercial lawyers said the number of clients seeking land ownership advice under a new constitution has risen steadily in the past three months to peak at the end of July as the referendum drew closer.

In a nondescript room on the 14th floor of a Nairobi office block, the words “hate speech” appear on a computer screen next to the name of a prominent politician, with location, a telephone number and buttons marked “Not verified” and “Follow-up”. Another message reads: “If you think peace is expensive, try violence!” Yet another says: “Plz help us. A certain community is threatening other communities to vacate the area in case YES wins.”

Provisional results of the referendum in Kenya indicates a landslide victory for the new constitution - at last a home grown one. Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell Ghai discuss the challenges of implementation and the importance of Kenya’s people ‘proclaiming their sovereignty’ through a constitution ‘made by the people, for the people’.

Kenya is once again at a crucial stage in its pursuit of a democratic constitution capable of bringing stability and unity to the country. Energy and resources are being focused towards ensuring the constitution referendum process is not plagued with violence in a repeat of the tragic events following the 2007 election. One innovative initiative is to allow the citizens themselves to provide up-to-date reports of potential trouble through the use of mobile phones and the internet.

In a landmark decision delivered on August 1 2010, the Court of Appeal of Kenya declared the mandatory death penalty for murder to be unconstitutional. This decision will benefit all prisoners presently under sentence of death. The ruling follows the recent decisions from Uganda and Malawi restricting the use of the death penalty in accordance with contemporary human rights standards.

Less than three years after a closely fought presidential election plunged Kenya into widespread violence and displaced thousands, the country is bracing itself for another crucial and equally divisive ballot, this time on a new constitution. "There is sufficient justification for people to be afraid, mainly because of hate messages and leaflets asking some communities to leave certain areas," said Ozonnia Ojielo, senior peace and development adviser at the UN Development Programme in Kenya. "There are also political actors using innuendoes."

Kenya is quickly gaining a competitive advantage in the mobile payments space. Led by mobile operator giant Safaricom with their Mpesa product, the market locally sees huge value in mobile money transactions. Add to that a regulatory system that is relaxed enough for innovation to be encouraged, and you have a great space for interesting things to happen.