Anti-LRA campaign sparks aid agency planning

The possibility of intensified civil unrest in Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, as a result of the Ugandan and Sudanese armies' joint pursuit of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) within Sudan has a number of humanitarian implications for both northern Uganda and Sudan, according to the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP). These included the possible return of 3,000 to 5,000 children abducted by the LRA to northern Uganda, it said in its latest emergency report. The United Nations Children's Fund last week expressed alarm at the fate of thousands of child abductees being held by the Ugandan insurgents as the Ugandan and Sudanese armies engaged in a joint military offensive against the LRA. The agency said its concern was that many children could be killed or injured in the campaign, including children who may have been forced to fight by their LRA captors. Despite several days of heavy fighting, no children had yet emerged, even as prisoners of war, and the fear was that many might have been killed or else broadly scattered over difficult areas where they could be undergoing untold suffering, agency sources told IRIN on Tuesday. Humanitarian agencies in Uganda have drawn up contingency arrangements based on the possibility of 4,000 or more ex-LRA combatants (perhaps 1,000 adults and the remainder mostly children) arriving in the north of the country - either by making their way to Juba, in southern Sudan, from where the International Organisation for Migration would fly them to Uganda, or by making their way directly across country. Those moving across the border would require emergency attention, such as health care, food assistance, psycho-social support and other help, which would have to be mobilised at once, according to humanitarian sources in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The Ugandan government's Amnesty Commission would also have an important role to play in assisting ex-combatants resettle and reintegrate in Ugandan society "in order to ensure a durable solution" to the problems of insurgency and insecurity, they added. The Ugandan-Sudanese military offensive against the LRA could also cause "the internal displacement of Sudanese civilians in the Eastern Equatoria region and a consequent influx of 60,000 Sudanese refugees to the northwestern region of Uganda," according to the WFP's scenario-building. Observers told IRIN on Wednesday that they understood this scenario to be addressing the possibility of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) taking advantage of the Ugandan push into Sudan to attack Sudanese government positions - causing insecurity in Eastern Equatoria which, if protracted, could cause an influx of refugees into Uganda - already host to over 150,000 Sudanese refugees. WFP also stated that some 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) were likely to return from protected camps in northern Uganda if the threat of the LRA were eliminated. This figure is in line with estimates from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Uganda that perhaps 200,000 IDPs in northern Uganda (about 40 percent of the total) could opt to return to their home areas within a year if security conditions were conducive. Given these scenarios, WFP and partner agencies have developed a contingency plan to cater for the return of abducted children, a possible influx of Sudanese refugees and the resettlement of IDPs in northern Uganda, the 28 March report from the UN food agency stated. WFP said it had pre-positioned available food stocks in anticipated areas of impact. These would most likely be Gulu and Kitgum districts, according to humanitarian sources in Uganda. The food aid requirement within the WFP contingency plan fits within a recently approved framework to supply targeted food assistance to IDPs, refugees and vulnerable groups, but the agency urgently requested donors to pledge resources. The operation would be implemented in 10 districts of northern Uganda in collaboration with the government's Department of Disaster Preparedness and Refugees in the office of the Prime Minister and NGO partners, WFP added.