Kikagati resettlement plans delayed

The planned resettlement of a group of Ugandan returnees from Tanzania, currently camped in Kikagati, Mbarara District, in the southwest, has been delayed following resistance from local residents in the proposed resettlement area. The Ugandan government had planned to resettle the returnees in the nearby district of Kibale, but was forced to alter the plans following objections from the local community, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in its 'Humanitarian Update' for Uganda on 31 January. Kibale District had more migrants than most other areas of the country, and the local population was apprehensive of additional outsiders being resettled in the same area, OCHA reported. "There are ongoing negotiations led by the prime minister's office to resolve the impasse," OCHA said. According to OCHA, government representatives said at a meeting on 17 January to discuss the problem that some 15 square miles of government-owned land in Kagadi, Kabale District, in the far southwest, had been allocated to the returnees. The returnees are part of a group of 3,027 Ugandans, mainly ethnic Bakiga cattle herders, expelled from Tanzania, allegedly for voting against Tanzania's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party in elections in October 2000, according to media reports. The expulsions happened after the CCM lost the elections in the northern Tanzanian area of Karagwe (Kagera District), where the long-time Ugandan settlers were living, reports added. However, the returnees said they were precluded from political participation, and had never voted in Tanzanian elections, the independent Monitor newspaper reported in Uganda on 27 December 2001. According to OCHA, an assessment of conditions in the Kikagati camp carried out by Oxfam-GB said the returnees were in "critical need" of water, shelter and household utensils. "What is interesting is that they fall between different mandates: they are not refugees and they are not IDPs [internally displaced persons], because they have crossed the Tanzanian border into Uganda, so no one has responsibility over them," Mads Oyen, an official at the United Nations Children's Fund in Kampala, told IRIN in January. Plans were also being drawn up for the phased return of some 200,000 IDPs from "protected villages" in the northern districts of Kitgum, Gulu and Pader, during a period of six to eight months, OCHA said. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in January that camps housing up to 400,000 IDPs in northern Uganda could be closed as early as April as a result of improved security in the area. OCHA described the current security situation in Uganda as "stable". In addition, the Karamoja subregion in the northeast, where the government has been carrying out a programme to remove some 40,000 illegal guns from circulation, had experienced calm, the report said.