Resettlement of Acholi-Pii refugees to be expedited

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Thursday said it was planning to resettle some 24,000 Sudanese refugees who fled their camp in northern Uganda, following an attack by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), much sooner than earlier anticipated. The LRA on 5 August attacked and destroyed the Acholi-Pii refugee camp in Pader District, killing about 60 people and dispersing all the 24,000 Sudanese refugees residing there. Most of the refugees who fled the camp were scattered within Pader and Lira districts, from where the UNHCR collected them and took them to Kiryondongo, an existing refugee site about 100 km southwest of Lira town. Bushra Malik, the UNHCR public information officer in Uganda, told IRIN from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, that the transfer of the refugees from Kiryondongo, where they are currently temporarily encamped, to a safer location in Kyangwali in Hoima District, western Uganda, would be completed within the next week, instead of a month as envisaged earlier. She said the plans had been changed for the purpose of cost-effectiveness. "The transfer may start sooner than we expected. We can't put up structures at Kiryondongo and at Kyangwali at the same time," she said. Malik also confirmed that UNHCR had closed the Acholi-Pii camp, but said any refugees left behind would be "assisted accordingly".