UN food agency gives US $386,000 to eastern region

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has released a grant of US $386,000 to provide agricultural inputs to vulnerable families living in Uganda’s troubled eastern districts of Kapchorwa, Katakwi, and Lira, FAO said on Wednesday. The money will be used to buy farm implements and seeds which will be distributed to some 22,000 target households. All are headed by children, widowed or single mothers, the elderly or the disabled. According to an FAO statement, FAO has signed a "technical cooperation agreement" with the Ugandan government to use the money to buy and distribute the items. FAO representative Ajmal M. Qureshi told IRIN: "We are working closely with the office of the prime minister. The aim is to give those displaced a means of standing on their own feet as a supplement to the relief they already receive from WFP [World Food Programme]". FAO has committed to supply some 14,000 pangas – large, heavy knives used for cutting vegetation – and 22,000 hand hoes to cultivate an estimated 9,750 hectares of land. The organisation has also pledged to deliver 70 mt of maize seeds, 140 mt of a variety of bean seeds, 40 mt of cowpea seeds and 24 mt of sorghum seeds, to be distributed among the targeted households, which average four people per household. If the weather holds out, as is widely predicted by meteorologists, FAO estimates that up to 15,180 mt of food will be produced by the next harvesting season. All three targeted districts suffer from underdevelopment and insecurity related to the proliferation of small arms in eastern and northern Uganda. Kapchorwa has long suffered cattle-rustling by heavily armed Pokot warriors from neighbouring northwestern Kenya. Katakwi, a district in the Teso region, is likewise subject to periodic cattle raids from neighbouring Karamojong warriors and has more recently been targeted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgents, based further north and in neighbouring southern Sudan. Lira district, to the northwest, is a traditional stronghold of the LRA, from where they have carried out relentless attacks on civilian targets, forcing people to flee their homes into camps for the internally displaced. Last weekend, 8-9 November, up to 100 civilians were reported butchered and their homes burned in one of the LRA’s most vicious attacks to date. Qureshi said that questions of security and safe access to the areas to be cultivated "will be handled by organisations working in the area".