Security situation in the north and east still volatile - UN

The general security situation in some parts of northern and eastern Uganda is still very volatile, according to United Nations officials. Addressing a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Thursday, the officials, who included the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Uganda, Daouda Toure, said the UN had reorganised itself to respond more effectively to the situation, and its recent advocacy efforts had raised interest in "one of the most forgotten crises" in Africa. Over the past 18 years, government forces have been battling rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. Since last year, the insecurity has spread to parts of the east. This has led to an increase in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the affected areas. "You are talking about 1.3 million people living in camps without adequate sanitation and water, of people who are maimed, abducted and raped - let alone the risks of HIV/AIDS infection - by their own people," Toure said at the launch of a new book by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) highlighting the northern Uganda crisis. "You are talking of children who run away from their homes every night to sleep in corridors of buildings in town without shelter over their heads." Entitled "When the sun sets, we start to worry..", the book is jointly published by OCHA's Regional Support Office for Central and Eastern Africa (RSO-CEA) and the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) in fulfilment of OCHA's mandate to assist and advocate for the rights of people suffering in disasters and emergencies. [An electronic version of the book is available at: www.irinnews.org/webspecials/northernuganda/] Using personal testimonies and powerful black-and-white photographs, the book aims to draw attention to the plight of the many Ugandan children, women and men whose present existence encompasses a degree of misery and horror seldom seen elsewhere. "The situation in northern Uganda should not be allowed to go on. That is why we produced this book, after producing some footage and a documentary earlier, to show the plight of the people in that region," Valerie Julliand, the head of RSO-CEA, said. Eliane Duthoit, the head of OCHA in Uganda, who had just returned from Teso region in eastern Uganda, said she found the situation there calmer, but the IDPs were still scared of returning to their villages. "We were told by the local leaders in Soroti that the situation has stabilised. Generally the situation is still very volatile. It involves groups of LRA rebels moving from place to place. One week, a district is safe, then, days later, it is not, so the internally displaced people have adopted a wait-and-see attitude," Duthoit said. "Gulu District is quieter, Kitgum is grim with 80 percent of the people in camps, and Pader is facing serious difficulties. In Lira there are still some sightings of rebels; in Katakwi 150,000 people in camps are not willing at all to return to their villages, and in Apac, 100-110,000 IDPs fled from their locations because of the LRA retreating from Teso," she added. Dutoit said the main needs of the IDPs were water and sanitation. Some NGOs had brought in emergency staff to try and help the civilians. NGO coordination would also be reinforced in Pader - which she called a forgotten district. Toure urged the parties to the conflict to build confidence and stop pointing fingers at each other. "There is no need for finger-pointing," he said. "The situation is sensitive and there is need to build confidence. This book gives you an idea of the deterioration of the situation." "Should the UN be requested to facilitate contacts in this process, we are ready to consider such a request. We are willing to support anything that helps to relieve the suffering there. That is why we are supporting the religious leaders seeking peace in the region," Toure added. He said the visit to northern Uganda last year by the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, had brought the crisis into the international agenda. The LRA, an extremely brutal cult-like armed group led by Joseph Kony, has fought against the government of President Yoweri Museveni for 18 years. It says it wants to replace Museveni's government with a regime based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.