Northern conflict taking a heavy toll, say NGOs

At least 131 people die every day in northern Uganda as a result of violence and poor conditions in camps for people displaced by war in the region, a coalition of nongovernmental organisations said on Thursday. "There are 918 excess deaths each week," the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU) said. "Each month almost 25,000 people in Uganda die from easily preventable diseases." It was not immediately possible to get a comment from the Uganda government on the report by the coalition. CSOPNU said 85 percent of deaths that would not have occurred under normal, non-crisis circumstances, could be directly attributed to the poor living conditions, poor water and sanitation, inadequate health care provision and extreme poverty in the camps. "The two most common killers reported were malaria and HIV/AIDS," it added. Each day, some 58 children under the age of five die as a result of violence and preventable diseases, according to CSOPNU. A quarter of all children in the region older than ten years had lost one or both parents. "Nearly half of all children in Kitgum, northern Uganda are stunted from chronic malnutrition," it said. "Three times more children under five years die in northern Uganda than in the rest of the country." A quarter of a million children in the region had never received any education, while some classrooms had as many as 300 students for every teacher. For the past two decades, the people of northern Uganda have suffered the devastating effects of a conflict between the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the government of President Yoweri Museveni. The rebels are notorious for mutilating and torturing civilians, and abducting children to serve as soldiers, domestic workers and sex slaves. CSOPNU noted that about 25,000 children had been abducted over the course of the war. The conflict, according to the coalition, has displaced up to two million people, forcing them into more than 200 overcrowded camps, where they depend almost entirely on humanitarian relief for their survival. "Population densities in some camps exceed 1,700 people per hectare, densities higher even than those in Africa's most notorious urban slums," it said, adding that 80 percent of the camps in the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader could not be accessed without military escorts. The region - once know as the breadbasket of Uganda - has also suffered the total destruction of its economy. "Nearly 70 percent of displaced people have no monetary income," the group noted. "95 percent of people in northern Ugandan districts live in absolute poverty." The annual cost of the war to Uganda - an estimated US $85 million - could provide clean drinking water for up to 3.5 million people per year. CSOPNU is a loose coalition of about 40 NGOs whose purpose is to "advocate for a just and lasting peace in northern Uganda, based on analysis and articulation of underlying causes and effects of the conflict." Member organisations include CARE International, Oxfam GB, the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network.