Glenna Gordon
31 July 2007
Kampala — AT the height of the insurgency, the number of internally displaced persons in northern Uganda reached two million.
Although the Juba peace process has made considerable gains, as many as 1.6 million people still remain in IDP camps in the region.
This is contained in a new report by the Makerere University based Refugee Law Project (RLP) entitled Rapid Assessment of Population Movement in Gulu and Pader.
There has been talk of late of IDPs returning home, a movement that supposedly reflects the growing security in the region and the progress of the peace talks.
"There have been substantial reductions in IDP numbers, notably in the Lango region, and the government has been keen to portray the emergency situation as nearly ended," says the report.
"Indeed it has tended to present the return process in Lango as representative of returns throughout the whole of northern Uganda, and as 'evidence' that the humanitarian situation has dramatically improved."
LRA terror patterns
According to the RLP, this movement is neither representative of the region as a whole nor of a growing sense of security. While many people in Lango and Teso have returned - as many as 90 per cent, the report says these people were some of the last to move into IDP camps and were the least terrorised by the LRA.
On the other hand, less than 10 per cent of the people in Gulu and Kitgum - areas hit hardest by the LRA - have moved out of the camps.
There has been movement, however, from what is termed 'mother camps' to 'decongestion sites' - newly formed camps often close to people's original parishes.
This has led to a rise in the number of camps: From around 70 originally, to as many as 300 now. This brings the additional problem of providing services to the people in the new decentralised IDP camps. Refugee Law Project Director Chris Dolan says now intervention must be at parish level rather than at central level.
"There hasn't been any forcible displacement of the kind when people were bombed out of villages in the past," says Mr Dolan.
"Now, it's a more subtle and complex set of pressures to move out of the mother camps - like cuts in food rations which make survival difficult and greater need for land."
The food cuts, says RLP, are largely associated with the growing perception by the international community that the conflict has come to an end.
According to the report, the displaced people in IDP camps have many reasons for movement.
These include the desire to go home, the need for land on which to grow more food, a government pronouncement made at the end of 2006 which commanded people to leave the camps, and unfavourable conditions inside the camps.
However, the people are not ready to return to their original homes just as yet.
"Not much has happened in terms of security but a sense of safety won't happen until there is a successful peace agreement. You have to consider a long history of failed peace initiatives, the failure of each escalating the situation's insecurity," says Mr Dolan.
Failed past efforts
"People have had a long experience of watching this government engage in a peace process that has had the opposite effects."
Mr Dolan said because of that experience, the people are careful, and vulnerable.
"They're malnourished. They are sick. Their land is overgrown and needs clearing, and they need to rebuild houses. The difficulties of going home are substantial," he says.
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