Uganda: Displaced People in the North Struggle for Basic Needs

25 April 2006

Gulu, Uganda — Caroline Akoko has lived for almost two years at a camp for people fleeing their homes in northern Uganda, where 18 years of war between government forces and a rebel group has caused widespread terror and destruction.

"It was on a daily basis that they attacked the village," said Akoko, referring to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a shadowy, guerrilla force composed largely of children kidnapped from the surrounding area and forced to fight. "They can kill your child. They can kill your husband. They can ask you for any amount of money and even if [you honestly don't have it], they can kill you."

The last time the LRA attacked her village, Akoko said, they grabbed her husband, tied his hands behind his back, and threatened him until she came up with enough money to win his freedom. She still bears the scars of a bayonet stab on her left calf.

Displaced residents of northern Uganda - called, in the parlance of international aid workers, "internally displaced persons", or IDPs for short - say they are rapidly losing hope that the war will end soon and are struggling to make do in congested camps with insufficient food and water.

"People are not happy to stay in the camp, but they stay because there is no way out," said Ronald Nyeko, camp leader at the 11,981-strong Alokolum IDP camp outside Gulu.

People first started fleeing to Alokolum in 1996, but the camp was not registered until October 2004. Many residents arrived in 2003 after the army issued orders requiring displaced people living in nearby villages to move to the camp.

The conflict in the north has been driven by the persistence of the LRA, despite numerous government offensives against the group. More than one million people are living in IDP camps, and about 25,000 children have been abducted, tortured, raped and forced to bear arms in a war that the UN has called "the world's worst forgotten crisis."

Regardless of the dangers and daily attacks, Akoko said she would have preferred to stay in her village to ride out of the storm of the war, because at least she would have had some land to till. As it is, she rents a small, nearby plot to grow okra, peas and greens to sell by the roadside.

The lack of land is a recurring complaint in the IDP camps. At Alokolum, residents cannot leave a four-kilometer radius around the camp, but at other camps, the ring of safety is only two kilometers.

The camps are safer than the villages, but still fall under LRA attack, as the residents of Alokolum found out last February. Three residents were killed by the LRA and some children were abducted, Nyeko said.

For Paicho camp resident Rose Adong, the safety of camp has been elusive.

In 1999, two of her daughters, aged 12 and 13, were kidnapped by the LRA and forced to join the rebel force. Adong's elder daughter fled the LRA camp at night, trying to escape her captors. Unfortunately, she got lost in the darkness and wandered back into the LRA area, where she was caught. As a punishment and lesson to other abductees, the 12-year-old was forced to kill her older sister. Adong said she learned the story many years later, when her surviving daughter escaped and returned to Paicho.

Adong said she welcomed the return of her daughter, regardless of what had happened, but that some members of the community worried that the young woman had been permanently damaged by years of violence and represented a threat.

"Then there was no rehabilitation," Adong said, referring to the rehabilitation centers built in Gulu that help former combatants readjust to civilian life. "It was not easy for her because people would imagine that she had a disturbed mind because she was with the rebels all that time when she was a girl."

Most camp leaders said that LRA attacks do not last long, as the combatants shoot, loot and run, often with the army right on their tail.

Although the Ugandan Peoples' Defense Force provides protection to the IDP camps, the soldiers can be another form of torment for camp dwellers.

"Even the army themselves, they are trying to infringe on the rights of the people," said Paicho camp leader Vincent Opwonya. "They beat you when they find you at night, so you must be indoors. Even on Christmas Day itself, two soldiers [fighting over a woman] fired guns which almost hit people."

In Lalogi camp, 15 people were killed late last year when the army opened fire on residents protesting the death of an 18-year-old boy, according to Ugandan radio. An army official in Kampala told the BBC that the boy was shot late at night, when he was mistaken for a rebel, but did not offer an explanation for the deaths of the unarmed demonstrators the following day.

Women in Paicho camp said that government soldiers rape girls and women, either by direct force or with promises of money. They said that the incidence of rape and defilement - the rape of children - has increased dramatically in the IDP camps. Evelyn Abalo, a Paicho resident, said girls are often forced to marry their rapists.

"These kind of people are [supposed to be] arrested and may be taken to court," Abalo said, "but that is not happening. Society is accepting it."

Abalo said alcohol plays a big role in rape and domestic violence. While women are fetching water, digging for food or tending the family, she said men have another pasttime.

"What men know here is drinking," she said. "The men here know how to drink very well."

Alcoholism is hitting Paicho camp hard, Opwonya said. "Even yesterday, a primary teacher died from taking too much alcohol." Men drink because they have nothing better to do, Opwonya said. With no hope and no regular work, alcohol helps them cope.

Alcohol is easy to get in the camps, if you have money to buy it. Water, a basic need for all camp residents, is free but difficult to get.

Lacor camp, with a population of 17,620, has just four water pumps, including one belonging to the local Catholic mission. There are 17,189 people living in Paicho camp, but just five working boreholes. To get water, women and children form long lines at the water pump, leaving their water containers to hold their place. Families often wait hours for five gallons of water. Once that water is used, it is back to the waiting line.

Food security is very poor in the camps, residents repeatedly said, and many children exhibit signs of malnutrition. The World Food Programme visits every two months, distributing rations of maize meal, beans and cooking oil, but camp residents say there is not enough food.

Sometimes the trucks run out of food or leave before all residents have gotten their portion, residents said. New arrivals must register to receive food, a process which can take months. But even residents who have registered sometimes find their names are not on the list and must wait for another two months to get food, camp leaders said.

At Paicho camp, Save the Children conducts a weekly supplemental feeding program, which women said helps with their children's nutrition.

To provide for their families, women said they do casual labor on nearby land for pay, rent plots of land to grow their own food, or look for other income-generating activities. Women make bricks, charcoal and other items to sell by the road. They use the money to buy food, but must keep it from their husbands who will use it to buy alcohol, women residents said. Some women in Paicho said men have even taken the WFP food to sell so they can buy alcohol.

Food security pushes some women to become more "man-oriented," Opwonya said. Sometimes women and girls will sleep with soldiers, because these are the men with money, which hastens the spread of HIV. Gulu district has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the country, according to national surveillance surveys.

Although condoms are available in the camps if you know where to look for them, their use is negligible, women said. "People who are sick, they don't want to use condoms," Paicho resident Tarazina Bongomin said.

Women would like to use condoms, she said, but they do not have a choice. If women try to refuse, their husbands will insist that they paid bride price and therefore have the right to have sex when they want and how they want, she said.

Back in Alokolum, Akoko's husband died of tuberculosis, after his immune system was weakened by HIV, she said. Akoko has since tested positive for HIV but said she is not scared to speak out about her status.

"It is not hard [to be open] if you are already a victim, because you can get help," Akoko said. "If you keep quiet no one will help."

With the twin specters of war and HIV, most camp residents said it was hard to imagine a happy future for their families. The first thing they want is peace so that they can return to their villages and farmland.

"The head of state says the war is over, but it doesn't finish," said Daniel Otto, a resident of Unyama camp.

Residents interviewed prior to the presidential elections in 2006 say they didn't know what the election would mean for the conflict in the north. President Yoweri Museveni won an unprecedented third term, after legislation abolishing constitutional term limits allowed him to run.

"I'm most worried about the political situation in Uganda," Nyeko said. "We pray (for) peace. We are tired of bloodshed in Acholiland."

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