Uganda's Camps: 'Children Will Curse Us'
By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI
Dickson Otto's dream is to move out of the Pagak Internally Displaced Persons
(IDP) camp where he has lived for eight years. He wants to return home to
lead
a normal life like his fellow Ugandans in the rest of the country.
"If it is possible, we should be allowed to return home, because we have
stayed for too long in this camp," he says in his appeal to whoever cares to
listen.
Otto's dream is not different from that of majority of the approximately
13,000 IDPs in Pagak camp, located in Lamogi sub county, Kilak County, 24 km
northwest of Gulu town.
Otto, a native of Gulu, has lived in the camp since it was established in
1996. He and his fellow villagers, who were successful farmers, now depend on
food aid. He remembers the fertile fields he used to cultivate back home,
where the yields gave them enough food for their families and a host of other
social and economic benefits.
"We have none of the things associated with a proper family setting like
privacy, liberty and a sense of ownership. Here, we even lack basic
necessities like food," he told The EastAfrican in Pagak recently.
The Catholic Archbishop of Gulu, John Baptist Odama, says: "Our concerns have
not changed, but the situation has got to change.
"People have even married in the camps and their children will curse us for
having failed to change their lives. Yet the situation is worsening
instead of
improving."
Odama, who is the chairman of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative,
attributes the failure to end this conflict to "lack of trust among the
warring parties."
Pagak is one of the original camps where displaced people were settled in
1996. It also hosts IDPs from the smaller camps of Kaladima and Guruguru,
which were established by the government in 2000 and were relocated from
their
original locations to Pagak in 2002 because of the deteriorating security in
their areas.
The camp has a population of 5,161 males and 5,882 females, making 2,743
households. Kaladima has 817 male and 887 female inmates, with 430
households.
Guruguru has 2,511 male and 2,548 female IDPs making 993 households.
There are four primary schools in the camp and three of them belong to IDPs
relocated from Kaladima and Guruguru.
Due to lack of a health unit in the camp, patients have to travel to Awere
health unit, about 5km away, for treatment.
The accommodation facilities in the camps have been described by the civil
society organisations operating in the Acholi sub-region as "makeshift
shelters dotted all over the northern and eastern parts of the country."
The IDP "protected camps," with the assistance of non-governmental
organisations, offer some relief food to the displaced people but basic
social
services remain inadequate leading to poor education and health conditions.
Lack of safe water and sanitation facilities worsens the situation.
The "protected" life in the camps has also led to a total breakdown of the
traditional Acholi, economic, social and cultural structures.
According to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), the only humanitarian
agency
reaching all the camps in the two regions, life in the IDP camps is
appalling.
An average camp is approximately one square mile in area with an estimated
population of 15,000 people living in crammed small huts with inadequate
space
and limited facilities like water, latrines, schools and health facilities.
"The prolonged displacement in this type of living environment has exposed
many IDPs to increasing levels of vulnerability," the WFP notes in a
statement.
The plight of the people was highlighted in the WFP Emergency Food Needs
Assessment (EFNA) 2001 report.
The displacement has hindered the majority of IDPs from producing enough food
for their families, hence greatly affecting the food security situation in
the
district and making them dependent on food aid, which is not sustainable in
the long run.
Since these camps receive reliable rainfall, the people are engaged in small-
scale agriculture growing rice, cassava, simsim, finger millet, groundnuts
and
sweet potatoes.
The head of the Gulu WFP sub-office, Pedro Amolat, told The
EastAfrican: "People top up their livelihood through petty trade in charcoal,
fire wood, vegetables and casual labour. The camp market is usually deserted
with few items on sale."
NGOs and other donors have been scaling down their operations in the district
since June 2002, following deterioration of security. Those remaining operate
mainly within Gulu municipality.
According to the latest population census, Gulu has 472,496 inhabitants,
236,434 of them male and 243,062 female. The insurgency has resulted in the
displacement of approximately 416,254 people of the district population into
33 IDP camps since 1996.
Since June 2002, approximately 29,000 tonnes of food have been distributed to
the affected population.
WFP provides food assistance to over 1.2 million IDPs in northern and eastern
Uganda using armed military escorts. In the eastern region, there are 305,899
displaced persons from Kumi, Soroti, Katakwi and Kaberamaido. There are
928,215 from the districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader and Lira in northern
Uganda.
When the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) stepped up attacks on the camps in June
last year, WFP responded by increasing its rations from meeting 30 per
cent of
the daily minimum nutritional requirements to 100 per cent.
In January this year, WFP assisted the Ministry of Health and the Gulu
District Department for Health Services to carry out a rapid nutritional
assessment in two IDP camps in Gulu, at Anaka and Pabbo. The results showed
a "serious situation" in terms of global acute malnutrition, with 31 per cent
for Anaka and 18 per cent for Pabbo.
WFP also started the school feeding programme (SFP), which is meant to
increase attendance in schools especially of disadvantaged pupils and enhance
the learning capacity of the children in the programme.
SFP is supported under the USAid-led Global School Feeding Initiative (GSFI)
providing one cooked meal (lunch) per day to 79,000 primary school
children in
Gulu and Kitgum currently.
Before the emergency, approximately 70,000 school children in 145 primary
schools were receiving WFP assistance through SFP, with participating schools
being mostly from the camps or close proximity to the camps.
The insurgency disrupted the SFP as most schools were closed and risk of
looting and abductions at school escalated. WFP is now focusing on the
displaced camps in the municipality and their host schools.
"The rationale is that children from the displaced schools in the
municipality
have come to town due to the insecurity and are hence uprooted from their
former setting", Amolat said. "Since they or their parents are not
assisted by
WFP through GFD, the SFP intervention is strategically encouraging the
children to continue their education while displaced in town."
SFP has since July resumed operations in the camps after an assessed reduced
risk in continuing with the programme. It is expected to benefit 120,000
primary school pupils in 172 primary schools and an estimated 10,000 pre-
school children.
The head teacher of Pagak Primary School, John Fred Okema, has his own
reservations about food distribution in camps. He says the programme
interferes with his classes on the days when there is food distribution every
month. "No one cares for classes during the programme. Every pupil's mind is
on the food programme, so they abandon classes," he says.
Food needs of the displaced persons have continued to rise in the face of
intensified insurgency by the LRA since June 2002. "Although the programming
process is flexible to accommodate both relief and recovery needs, the
current
unpredictable LRA insurgency remains a challenge to the programme," cautions
WFP.
"Donor response has been good. Food and cash pledges and confirmation have
been received," said Amolat. "WFP will therefore be able to meet its food
requirement to feed the desperately hungry and poor people in the camps
through to December this year."
WFP now encourages NGO communities to provide non-food items to complement
food resources to IDPs.
The northern conflict started in 1986 when former soldiers of the Uganda
National Liberation Army (UNLA) regrouped themselves and started a guerilla
movement called the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA) against the NRM/A
government for alleged excesses committed when they captured northern
Uganda.
Several rebel groups emerged during the same period and following the 1988
peace accord between a UPDA faction and the government, the LRA eventually
became the main armed opposition group in the region.
An NGO called Gulu Civil Society says the government has used the military
option with intervals of concurrent peace initiatives as a strategy to
address
the conflict without any predictable end in sight. It has appealed to the
international community to take a more active and positive direct role,
and "work towards expeditious resolution of the conflict through meaningful
dialogue.
"Human rights violations are common as a result of the nearly two decades of
the internecine conflict," says the civil society.
Access to camps remains a major concern for aid agencies. Regular attacks,
ambushes, abductions and killings by LRA rebels have resulted in increased
insecurity.
WFP has included Teso region among the world's hunger spots. It says places
with severe food shortage in the region are increasing requiring particular
attention.
The army has been unable to provide adequate protection to civilian and
humanitarian organisations. Humanitarian agencies have been unable to access
the majority of the IDP camps because of the rampant insecurity across the
sub-
region.
Gulu Civil Society believes that a solution based on military intervention is
inappropriate. "This is evidenced by the numerous failed attempts by the
government to end the conflict through military means. Instead, these efforts
have been counter-productive as they have led to increased suffering of
civilians at the hands of rebels."
The NGO argues that whereas the international community is doing a good
job in
funding relief operations in the north, additional efforts to bring an end to
the conflict through peaceful means are required. They want the donor
community to act as mediators.
Unicef estimates that 18,000 adults and about 10,000 children were abducted
between 1990 and 2001. Since the child-rescue military intervention
"Operation
Iron Fist" in 2002, around 8,000 children and the same number of adults have
been abducted by the LRA.
Most of the adults were released but more than half of the children have not
been accounted for to date and are believed to either have died or still
be in
captivity.
ends.
THE EAST AFRICAN
http://www.nationaudio.com/eastafrican
http://www.nationaudio.com
