[Ugnet] U.N. says operations in northern Uganda have failed

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:06:10 -0800

Friday March 17, 7:54 PM

U.N. says operations in northern Uganda have failed

KAMPALA (Reuters) - The U.N., donors and the government have failed 1.6 million people uprooted by two decades of civil war in northern Uganda, but a new initiative provides a glimmer of hope, a U.N. aid official said on Friday.
Dennis McNamara, the United Nations special adviser on internal displacement, said some members of the Security Council remained reluctant to put the conflict on its agenda.
But he said meetings next week among the U.N., Uganda and donors would aim to forge a plan to end the suffering.
"There is a very intense international effort, which has not happened before," McNamara told reporters in Kampala. He gave no further details.
Northern Uganda's people live in scores of squalid camps, sheltering from fighting between government troops and rebels from the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) -- notorious for kidnapping at least 25, 000 children.
"They are over-crowded, unacceptable slums where people do not get services and they are unprotected," McNamara said.
Living conditions are worsened because "the government is not protecting them properly... They are violated and abused with impunity by many sides, n ot just the LRA."
Aid workers say the north ranks among the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters. Death rates are higher than they were a year ago, the U.N. says, and twice as high as those in neighbouring Sudan's conflict-ridden Darfur region.
Uganda's army often says the LRA is on the verge of defeat, but McNamara said those claims did not tally with his experiences on several recent visits to the north.
"We are told it is nearly over, then we are escorted by two armoured cars and 35 soldiers," he said. "So, obviously, there are basic inconsistencies in what we are being told."
He said next week's meetings, to be followed by a March 30-31 visit to northern Uganda by U.N Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, provided some hope.
Aid workers had fought hard to have the conflict discussed by the Security Council, which has never made a resolution on the north, but some member nations were ambivalent, he said.
Uganda has long been a favourite of the West as a centre of stability, development and support. That legacy has produced some hesitation by Security Council members, McNamara said.
"We hope they might be more courageous than they have been in the past," McNamara said

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