Karamojong force over 80,000 into IDP camps

Over 80,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Katakwi District, eastern Uganda, are in urgent need of improved security to protect them from attacks by Karamojong pastoralists, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has warned. If displacement in Katakwi were ended, the government would have to take action to ensure the safety of the population of the district and the (northeastern) region as a whole, OCHA said in an assessment of displacement in Katakwi, released late last week. “The overall need for efficient security in the district cannot be emphasised enough,” it added. According to district statistics, there are currently 88,623 IDPs in 46 camps in Katakwi, from an estimated total population of 230,000. The most severely affected areas are the sub-counties of Magoro, Ngariam, Usuk, Kapelebyong, Obalanga and Acowa, which border on the Karamoja sub-region, according to OCHA. Since the start of the year, the Karamojong had carried out 52 attacks in these sub-counties, and “the threat of further raids is ever-present”, it added. Displaced people in the camps in Katakwi were suffering unusually high rates of malaria, diarrhoea, intestinal worms, upper respiratory tract infections and pneumonia, according to OCHA’s assessment. Many of the camps were isolated, and IDPs had to travel an average of 15 km on foot to reach a health centre, it said. OCHA described the sanitation situation within the camps as “a time bomb just waiting to explode”. The report decried the poor attention that these long-term IDPs have received from the government and international aid agencies. “With most camps receiving no intervention from agencies, and with the displaced having little or no property, and limited access to their gardens, they have lost a source of income and become progressively impoverished and destitute,” it said. The Ugandan government initially provided arms to small groups of “home guards” within Karamoja, to enable the population defend defend itself against raids from other pastoralist groups in the region, notably from the Pokot in neighbouring Kenya, humanitarian sources told IRIN. Karamojong raiders were also able to access supplies of small arms as a result of the ongoing conflict in Sudan, while the prevalence of young, armed men with very little training would certainly add to insecurity in the region, they added. Despite large-scale internal displacement in the northern districts, the government of Uganda has yet to formulate a clear policy on displacement, according to OCHA. Many IDPs had fled to the camps last year, when the Karamojong carried out the worst recorded raids against the population of Katakwi, during which they routinely killed, raped and abducted people from their villages. Most of the camps were initially established in 1979, when the Karamojong carried out one of their biggest raids. Since then, the Katakwi people have returned to their homes during periods of relative peace, but have been repeatedly forced back into the camps when attacks from the Karamojong increased. During safer times, some of the IDPs actually locked up their camp huts and stayed in their homes until the next bad raid forced them back into the camps, OCHA said. Food supply in the camps was a major difficulty, according to the report. Although cultivable land is available, most IDPs do not have sufficient access to it due to insecurity, and they remain dependent on buying food to meet their needs. In areas where IDPs had managed to cultivate land, the Karamojong deliberately uprooted and slashed crops, aggravating food insecurity in the camps, OCHA stated. Neither was paid work readily availabe and, although most households were able to cope, they did so with “extreme difficulty”, it added.