UN: Fear in Northern Uganda

Child Soldiers have created a climate of fear

UGANDA: Too scared to return home

KITGUM, 21 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - Wilson Akera hates living in Padibe camp for internally displaced persons because life is generally unbearable but he is even more scared of the prospect of returning home soon as he believes insecurity is still rife in the villages.

"We are willing to go home and end this cycle of despair, but we are uncertain of our security," Akera said. "The area a few kilometres out of here is a den of the unknown. Groups of rebels still loiter there."

Akera is one of the 1.6 million-plus people who have been displaced by two decades of war between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. He has lived in Padibe camp for years, relying on aid agencies to survive. The camp is located in the northern Kitgum district - one of the areas worst hit by the rebellion.

Rose Agiro agreed that in spite of the bad conditions at Padibe, returning home, some 6 km away, was not a viable option. "We have no land around here for cultivation. I would prefer to return home and access my field, but there is no security. If I go back, the rebels are there and will abduct my children," she said. Conditions in the camp are tough for Agiro, 46, and her family of six. Water is in short supply, and there are not enough classrooms, creating overcrowding and putting pressure on the few available teachers.

Residents complained that their needs remained great. "More boreholes are needed, more classrooms, provision of agricultural implements is required," said a memorandum read to Dennis McNamara, head of the UN Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division, who led a team of donors to evaluate the situation between 15 and 17 March. "There is need for the decongestion of the camps and more security," the memorandum added.

McNamara told reporters: "We need to break out of this prolonged humanitarian crisis. The conditions these people are living in are totally below any standards. They are unacceptable in terms of lack of assistance, lack of protection."

Ugandan authorities said the problem of decongesting the camps was being addressed through the creation of "satellite villages". Through this programme, military units have been established and people are encouraged to settle alongside them. However, local residents said the transition was very hard, as not enough supplies were available at the new locations.

Dure camp, further south of Kitgum town, is one new location, where aid workers are trying to cope with the situation. "This translates into changing our operations and increasing the logistics to deliver supplies to these new locations, a change that takes time," said one relief worker at the camp, where the European Union had just set up a solar-powered borehole in response to the water problem there.

Prepare to go home, says government

McNamara warned that any returns of the displaced to their villages must be voluntary. "We can only support that return if it is voluntary, if it is safe and if it is viable. If it is not, we will not be able to support if," he said.

Vincent Okongo, 60, who lives in Dure camp, insisted there had been no guarantee that the rebellion was ending. "Two days ago, we got reports of rebels passing nearby the camps, so we do not know what this means. The only good thing is that many are continuing to surrender to the army," he said.

Ugandan authorities insist that the rebellion is at its end and the displaced should prepare to start going home in April. "The army has defeated the LRA terrorism in the north and the peace prevailing now in southern Sudan has paved way for the return of the displaced persons to their homes," President Yoweri Museveni told a delegation from the United States that visited him over the weekend. He said that only 120 rebel fighters were remaining, and even they had fled from southern Sudan to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Asked in an interview with the Ugandan Sunday Vision newspaper whether he thought the camps should be dismantled, the president answered, "The IDPs [internally displaced persons] are going home." Days earlier, his government said it would buy 259,000 roofing sheets to be distributed to returnees in the war-affected districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Kaberamaido, Apac, Katakwi, Pader, Kumi and Amuria. Each household would get 30 sheets to rebuild their home – a small start given the number of displaced families living in the camps.

Children most affected

At Padibe, according to 19-year-old Alex Akena, four children who had gone to gather mangoes had disappeared - most probably having been abducted by the LRA - one week before the UN delegation’s visit. They represent only a tiny fraction of a particularly vulnerable group that has borne the brunt of the conflict. Children, perhaps more than anybody else, will live longest with brutal memories of the terror and abuse they suffered as captives of the LRA.

Irene Ajok, nine, is afraid to sleep at night. She said that if she slept, she might be abducted and forced to eat a human being, as her sister was almost made to do when the rebels abducted them. "They killed a person and ordered the freshly abducted children, including my sister, Lillian, to eat the body. They refused to eat that body, and she was made to carry a heavy load of sorghum for a long distance as a punishment," Ajok told IRIN at a night commuters’ centre at a school in Kitgum. She is one of 400 children who seek refuge there every night.

Night commuters are children who, out of fear of LRA abduction, flee their home villages each night to sleep in the relative safety of larger towns. In the morning, they return to their villages. There are an estimated 40,000 night commuters in northern Uganda. The children said life as a night commuter was difficult, but better than living with the cruel treatment meted out by the rebels.

For many former abductees, the memories of atrocities committed by either their peers or LRA rebels torment them the most. Twelve-year-old Walter said he was never tortured or made to kill when he was abducted two years ago, but he had seen people having their heads cut off when they tried to escape. "Their eyes were looking at me," Walter remembered, speaking quickly in a monotone.

Rights groups and relief agencies estimate that the LRA has abducted at least 25,000 children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves since the rebellion started in northern Uganda in 1988.

The war drags on

The war, often described as the world's worst forgotten humanitarian crisis, has dragged on despite on-and-off attempts to pursue peace talks. Over time, the Ugandan military offensives have driven the rebels further underground and into neighbouring countries.

Last week, the Ugandan army claimed that LRA leader Joseph Kony had fled from bases in southern Sudan into eastern DRC. If true, said army spokesman Maj Felix Kuraigye, the elusive guerrilla leader's drawn-out violent campaign - ostensibly to replace Museveni’s government with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments - is waning.

Pressure on the rebels has also grown since 2005, when Kony and four top commanders were indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, among them the "brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement (and) mutilations".