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Uganda: Food Crisis, Starvation in the Northeast
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
22 May 2008
Posted to the web 22 May 2008
Kampala
Uganda's remote northeastern Karamoja region is facing a humanitarian emergency due to widespread food shortages, with some local people already starving, senior officials said.
"We witnessed people starving," Aston Kajara, the government minister in charge of Karamoja development, told reporters in Kampala after visiting the region last week. "People are eating rats, others are eating leaves."
Disaster preparedness minister Musa Ecweru said some hunger-related deaths had been reported. Other people were living on one meal a day. "Between 80 and 90 percent of the one million people in Karamoja are in acute food shortage and depend on relief supplies," he said on 20 May.
A joint survey by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the health ministry in February found acute malnutrition rates above the emergency threshold in two districts - 15.6 percent in Moroto and 15.1 percent in Nakapiripirit.
"WFP cannot confirm or refute reports that people are dying, but there is a humanitarian emergency," country director Tesema Negash said. "A combination of factors, including long dry spells, droughts, population explosion, severe environmental degradation and chronic insecurity has led to perpetual vulnerability in Karamoja."
In 2006, the region suffered a severe drought. In 2007, it experienced a dry spell followed by floods and massive water-logging in the most fertile areas. Then, a honey dew fungal infection destroyed the staple sorghum crop while other diseases killed thousands of cattle, goats and sheep, and food prices rose.
"Many people in Karamoja are becoming part of the 'new face of hunger' as rising food prices make food unaffordable," Negash told IRIN on 22 May.
"According to our market surveys, from December 2007 to April 2008, the price of sorghum in Nakapiripirit and Moroto increased by an average of 56 percent, while the price of maize increased by 32 percent and beans by 43 percent."
Cash constraint
WFP, which is involved in various programmes in Karamoja, said an estimated 700,000 people needed immediate relief on a monthly basis until they could recover; 300,000 people needed relief until September and 400,000 up to July.
Cash was, however, a constraint. "We cannot be sure we will reach all the 700,000 on a monthly basis all the way because we have cash constraints," Negash added. "WFP Uganda needs US$185 million to get through this year. We have received only 42 percent of these resources."
Ecweru said the Ugandan government had mobilised three billion shillings ($1.8 million) to address the food crisis in Karamoja as well as in flood-affected neighbouring districts and other parts of the country.
"During the election violence in Kenya, food stores were destroyed ... many [Kenyan] people currently get their food from Uganda, which creates some pressure on available stock," he told IRIN. "Most of the food feeding Southern Sudan comes from here and you can see the pressure mounting."
Kajara said the government would distribute high yielding sorghum seeds that could mature in 30 days. Tractors would also be made available.
In a recent report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Karamoja's problems had been compounded by the increasing impact of climate change, insecurity and ongoing forced disarmament by government soldiers.
"Whereas in the 1980s and early 1990s the severe drought cycle was every 10 years, at present droughts are coming every two to three years, while 2006 and 2007 saw back-to-back years of extended dry spells," it noted. "At the current rate of progress, Karamoja will not attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015."
The region has the country's worst development indicators, according to the Uganda bureau of statistics. Only 19 percent of children aged 6-12 are in school (compared with a national average of 83 percent) while maternal mortality is 750 per 100,000 live births against 505 nationally.
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[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
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