IDPs in the east contemplate going home

Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the eastern Teso region, who fled rebel attacks on their villages and sought refuge in urban areas, have started going home, according to government and humanitarian officials. The IDPs were displaced last year by fighting between the government and rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), who extended their operations from northern Uganda to the eastern districts in 2003, despite claims by the government army that the rebels had been weakened. However, Christine Aporu, the minister of state for disaster preparedness in the prime minister's office, told IRIN on Tuesday that while the IDPs were contemplating resettling in their villages, they were still in dire need of food and agricultural inputs. Some of them, especially in Katakwi District, were sleeping hungry, she added. "The greatest problem at the moment is that the IDPs do not have enough food or planting materials to regenerate their gardens. The rebels launched their attacks during harvest season, so most people fled leaving their mature crops to go to waste," Aporu told IRIN. The minister said most of the 90,000 IDPs who had camped in Soroti, the main town in the region, 347 km east of the capital, Kampala, had moved out of the town centre. "We are trying to verify the numbers of those who are still encamped," Aporu added. "A significant proportion of the population in Teso were displaced. Kumi town [315 km east of Kampala] hosted 59,000, while 36 percent of the 371,000 people in Soroti District were IDPs. In Katakwi and Kaberamaido districts [just north of Soroti], 34 percent of the population in Katakwi and 79 percent in Kaberamaido districts were also IDPs. These numbers are now reducing," she added. Eliane Duthoit, the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kampala, told IRIN that the situation was now improving. "The displaced people are commuting between Soroti Municipality and their villages, trying to see whether they should fully return home. We are trying to see how to facilitate their going back once the situation normalises," she said. Aporu said the government had reopened most schools and roads that had been closed due to the insurgency, but the children had not yet returned in large numbers. "We have a tracking exercise to determine where the children are and encourage them to return to school," she said. "Most IDPs still fear to bring their children to school because the rebels particularly targeted children." Local district officials in Soroti said that of a total of about 300,000 IDPs in the region, at least 20,000 had resettled in their villages, following recent reports of increasing stability in Teso, where local militia groups have been armed to fight back the rebels. The LRA, a shadowy group, has fought the government since 1986, killing thousands, displacing 1.4 million civilians, especially in the north, and abducting a estimated 25,000 children. Many of the young boys are forced into combat, while girls are often used as sex slaves. Attempts to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict have so far failed, and religious leaders, local politicians and civil society groups are now asking the international community to help end the violence. The government of President Yoweri Museveni has vowed to crush the rebels militarily.