UN to increase presence in the north

The United Nations is planning to increase its presence and programmes in northern Uganda in 2006 to help some two million people displaced by conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced on Monday. "This is one of the longest, largest, and least addressed humanitarian crises in the world today," said Dennis McNamara, special advisor on displacement to the UN emergency relief coordinator, in a statement. "It has uprooted as many people as the Bosnian war did 10 years ago, but gets only a fraction of the international attention," added McNamara, who had just spent a week in Uganda. He also visited Kitgum district near the Sudanese border, where two NGO workers were killed in recent weeks by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Nearly two million people have been displaced by the 19-year conflict between the Ugandan government and the LRA. Some 1.7 million live in over 200 squalid and overcrowded camps and rely largely on international assistance to survive. OCHA noted that a July 2005 mortality survey by the Ugandan ministry of health and the World Health Organization estimated that more than 1,000 people die in the camps from disease or violence each week. The UN plans to increase its international presence in the country primarily through its main humanitarian organisations - the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), OCHA and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UN would also increase its request for funding for humanitarian programmes to more than US $200 million for 2006. "But we need the government of Uganda to do much more," McNamara added. "They must provide security for the agencies to work, safe access and better assistance and protection to the displaced people. "They also need to ensure safe freedom of movement for those who want to go home. The government has the primary responsibility for the long-suffering Ugandans, and they need to do much more," he maintained. OCHA said despite the lack of assistance and insecurity, some 400,000 displaced people in Teso and Lango areas had returned or were returning home to cultivate their fields before the next planting season in March. They urgently needed more agricultural support. "All actors - the UN, the NGOs, the Ugandan government and donor governments - need to do considerably more, and to increase their assistance if this long-neglected tragedy is to be overcome," said McNamara.