Agencies appeal for emergency aid

The Ugandan government and humanitarian agencies have appealed to donors for emergency food relief to help up to a million people who are threatened with food shortages in the war-affected northern part of the country. Action by Churches Together (ACT), a global alliance of churches and relief agencies, said it needed US $219,393 to provide relief food, seeds, tools, and non-food items such as medicines and blankets in parts of northern Uganda affected by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. In its appeal dated 30 January, ACT said the emergency assistance was aimed at curbing the devastating impact of LRA attacks on protected camps in Northern Uganda. According to ACT, the rebels have so far burnt down 3,103 houses in 13 camps in Gulu district alone. "Many organisations have responded to this human catastrophe but the need is so great that no single agency or multiple agencies can meet the needs. Worse still the need is ever increasing because of the escalation in the conflict," the appeal stated. The rebellion, which has persisted since 1987, has been characterised by massive destruction of property, executions and abduction of children who have been forcefully conscripted into the LRA's army as child soldiers. The Ugandan government, on its part, has also has appealed for US $67 million to avert the crisis in the north. The second deputy prime minister, Moses Ali, said some 800,000 people displaced by the insurgency and some 150,000 refugees living in camps in the north, were threatened with starvation between now and June, Uganda's independent daily 'The Monitor' reported. The latest appeals followed last week's warning by the World Food Programme (WFP) that it had run out of food supplies to feed some 800,000 displaced people in northern Ugandan.