Refugee organisation condemns plan to move Sudanese refugees

A prominent refugee organisation in Uganda has condemned the government's refusal to listen to Sudanese refugees at a camp in western Uganda, who are unhappy over plans to move them north, closer to the Sudanese border. The Kiryandongo camp has been the scene of angry protests over proposals to relocate its 16,000 Sudanese residents to Madiokolo and Ikafe camps in West Nile region. The refugees fear being attacked by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who are operating in the area. On Tuesday, the Kampala-based Refugee Law Project issued a statement saying the Ugandan government had a "legal and moral responsibility to ensure the refugees’ security and to take into consideration their fears and experiences”. “Their [government's] current position on the transfer of ‘take it or leave it’ is inconsistent with humanitarian principles," the statement said. "The refugees’ refusal to go to West Nile is ... born of practical experiences of violence and murder at the hands of rebels [in Acholi Pii, last year].” Zaahamy Lomo, director of the programme, told IRIN that “the Ikafe camp suggestion even violates international law". "We have specifically cited the UN convention on refugees, which states clearly that they have to be relocated at least 50 km from the border of their country of origin,” he stated. "Refugee protection should be a whole national project, not something where you confine people to places where there is no-one else," he added. He said refugees should be integrated into the host communities if the conflict at home had not been resolved after 12 months, and criticised the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for not reacting more strongly to the government's proposals. "We understand they [UNHCR] are in catch-22 because they cannot upset their host countries, but this time they were too accepting, at the refugees’ expense," he said.