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Uganda: Nort, Karamoja Region in Food Crisis
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The Monitor (Kampala)
10 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Samuel Egadu
Humanitarian activities in northern Uganda, which is emerging from more than two decades of civil war, are being curtailed because of a decline in funding and rising food costs, aid agencies and a government minister have warned.
The State Minister for Relief and Disaster Preparedness, Mr Musa Ecweru said the donor countries have scaled down their humanitarian assistance to the war ravaged region as internally displaced people are encouraged to return to their villages.
The scaling down of humanitarian assistance to the region however is likely to have a huge impact on the over 1.6 million displaced persons, who are now returning to their homes following relative peace.
"Although the big donors, including the United States and Britain, have continued to support us, there has been a marked scaling down in their humanitarian response to us because they presume that we are no longer having a problem," Mr Ecweru said.
He said the government is likely to divert funds earmarked for development projects to ensure food security for the most vulnerable persons.
"We should not allow the situation to degenerate into anarchy because food is a critical element of survival," he said. "The United Nations should be supported and for us as government, we shall do our best."
Mr Ecweru added: "We are strained to breaking point. In Karamoja, where 700,000 people need relief this year, we used to intervene every five years, then it became every two years, now it appears it will be every year.
Meanwhile [in the war-ravaged northwest] 940,000 internally displaced persons still need relief even with much better access to farming land now. The number is expected to reduce over time."
Although the LRA no longer has bases in northern Uganda, the region's population still has enormous humanitarian needs.
Gulu LC5 chairman Norbert Mao, on Tuesday told Daily Monitor that the donor support is no longer about emergency relief but reconstruction of the region.
"The nature of assistance is changing. We no longer need food and blankets. We are now interested in the reconstruction effort. The donors and NGO's must change from relief to reconstruction," Mr Mao said.
"We expect donors and NGO's to help and support us in the reconstruction programme. They must provide PRDP (Peace, Recovery and Development Programme," he said.
Meanwhile, the northeastern Karamoja region is in the throes of a food crisis that has left almost the entire population dependent on outside assistance.
Only 21 per cent of the funds sought by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), through the Consolidated Appeal Process, have been secured which is just about half the proportion provided by the same time in 2007.
"Out of the $58 million which the agency appealed for in December (2007), only 11.6 million has been received," Unicef spokesman Chulho Hyun said.
"Some of the major areas of the appeal, including water and sanitation, and HIV/Aids, have not received a single response. For those that have been funded, the funding has been below half of what is required," he added.
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He noted that northern Uganda was now in a post-conflict recovery phase. Mr Hyun said: " With this momentum that has been generated, we want to make the message clear .
"If the international community is serious about investing in a stable and secure northern Uganda, the intervention should continue to give the people of northern Uganda a fighting chance to claim back a sense of normalcy in their life. "We have to make the transition and if we fail, this will be a lost opportunity." he added.
The UN World Food Programme says a funding shortfall has forced it to interrupt some of it's programmes in Uganda.
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