Obviously there are criminal cases here that only a new, future government can
deal with. Some people needs to answer questions on this serious issue.
Ocii
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The government must do more to help IDPs
Concy Aciro
Anyone following government’s muddled resettlement programme in northern Uganda
will have by now known that residents should not expect any meaningful
assistance in their quest to return to their homes. Camp dwellers are returning
to their villages amidst uncertainty - an exercise that is again bound to test
the victims’ resilience and determination to start afresh.
These are interesting times for the people of especially Acholi and Lango
sub-regions. First they were haphazardly herded into a situation of
desperation, fear, hopelessness, deaths and uncertainty in the camps. In
September 1996, the government created Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and
forced people to leave their homes for the camps.
The UPDF participated in the exercise and in October 2002, it issued an order
requiring all ‘law-abiding citizens in the villages to vacate with immediate
effect’. This evacuation order displaced more than 500,000 civilians. The Army
said that forty-eight hours after the order, any person found in the villages
would be presumed to be a rebel and would be killed.
This is contrary to what Disaster Preparedness State Minister Musa Ecweru said
that the government never woke up one day and decided to set up camps, and that
people voluntarily went to the camps (New Vision, July 14). Now the government
is urging people to return but without any meaningful support given to them.
People are going back to their villages on their own.
While addressing the Soroti disaster management committee members and selected
IDP leaders at Soroti Lukiko in 2006, Disaster Preparaness minister Tarsis
Kabwegyere, cynically told IDPs not to wait for government supports “but go
back home the way they went to the camps”. This was in response to camp
leaders demand that the government supplies relief items to the IDPs to enable
them resettle (New Vision of July 18, 2006.
The UN’s 30 guiding principles on IDPs, developed in the late 1990s, identify
the rights and guarantees relevant for the protection of IDPs and their
assistance during displacement as well as return, resettlement and
reintegration.
One of the principles states: “Competent authorities have the primary duty and
responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which
allow IDPs to return voluntarily in safety and with dignity to their homes or
places of habitual residence. Such authorities shall endeavour to facilitate
the reintegration of returned or resettled.”
The people who were forced out of their homes decades ago need homes but
government says it “will provide mabaatis for every household on condition that
a structure has been erected”.
A letter from the Office of the President’s dated August 22, addressed to the
Office of the Prime Minister, criticised people in IDPs for being reluctant to
return to their homes.
That one of the best ways of attracting them to resettle in their home areas is
to equip 54 local chiefs in Acholi with iron sheets and cement using the PRDP
Funds for them to put up permanent structures.
Sadly, resettlement programmes do not address the issue of compensation for
landowners, where IDPs and army detachments are located. Minister Kabwegyere is
quoted to have said that the government will not compensate people in northern
Uganda for property destroyed and land degraded.
“Landlords’ demands are unrealistic as the landowners have instead benefited
from the IDPs.” (Sunday Vision, October 28, 2007). As a result of creation of
IDPs and army detachments, almost 25 per cent of the population in Acholi are
landless. One wonders what kind of benefit the minister talked about!
Ms Aciro is a development expert and Woman MP Amuru District
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