Humanitarian situation worse in the north - donors

The humanitarian situation in the northern districts of Kitgum and Gulu has worsened with increasingly terrifying rebel attacks on civilian targets, more congestion in camps which already lack adequate sanitation facilities, and a world whose attention has been distracted by emergencies elsewhere, donors say. Pierre Combernous, the Swiss ambassador to Kenya and Uganda, who led a group of representatives of donor countries on a fact-finding tour of northern Uganda lasting from Tuesday until Thursday, described the situation in the area as a "humanitarian crisis of tragic magnitude". It was such, he said, that it demanded all the attention possible towards helping the over 1.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had been forced out of their homes by the war between the Ugandan army and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The team, comprising representatives of Austria, Canada, Finland, the EU, Spain and Sweden, and of UN, toured camps for IDPs, who told them they were in desperate need of international intervention to solve the crisis in the region, and for more food and health-care supplies. The tour was organised by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Regional Support Office for Central and East Africa. Timo Olkkonen, of the Finnish embassy told IRIN that the situation in the region had become "a human tragedy of vast proportion", adding that "attention should be given to what is taking place in northern Uganda and assistance given accordingly". As the members of the team walked between the rows of huts in the sprawling Pabbo camp, 42 km northwest of Gulu town, they were followed by hordes of barefoot children dressed in dirty rags. The camp, one of the biggest with over 60,000 people, is located at the spot where the 18-year-old LRA rebellion started on 8 June 1986, according to the local county council chairman, Christopher Ojera. DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF CAMP LIFE "Our culture is all shattered, and the education of our children in an illusion. In the camp, sanitation is one of our main nightmares. Food supplies are also inadequate, yet it is risky for people to access their gardens. Some of those who tried have been killed," Ojera told IRIN at Pabbo. According to NGOs, living in the camps has resulted in social disintegration, economic disempowerment of families, and drug abuse coupled with high levels of promiscuity and unprotected sex, resulting in greater risk of HIV/AIDS infection and increasing numbers of child mothers. Many IDPs, Ojera added, were also suffering from diseases like malaria, dysentery and various types of skin infections. KITGUM RESIDENTS TRAUMATISED Before flying to Gulu, 360 km north of the capital, Kampala, the team visited Kitgum town, another 100 km to the north. They found its inhabitants enveloped by a sense of fear, with 90 percent of the population living in camps which have been increasingly targeted by the LRA. IDPs there told the team that the rebels frequently attacked the camps to steal food and medicine, and to abduct young men and girls to replenish their fighting ranks. Just hours after the team left after visiting the nearby Labuje IDP camp near the town centre, the army repulsed an evening attack on it by the rebels. Another attempted attack had been foiled two days earlier, security sources told IRIN. At least 120 IDPs had been killed in attacks on their camps in the past three weeks, local leaders, who pleaded for enhanced security from government forces, said. The attacks included one on 8 June in Abok, Ngai sub-county, in Lira District, in which 25 died; in another, on 3 June, the LRA killed 23 people at Kalabong, in Namokora sub-county, Kitgum District; a 20 May attack, in which 41 people were killed, on the Lukodi camp in Gulu District; and an earlier attack on Pagak camp, also in Gulu District, in which 39 people died. INADEQUATE EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE Labuje houses some 14,000 IDPs. The team was told at least 200 children in the camp receive primary education in crowded classrooms, many sitting on bare floors. The parents said they could not afford to pay for secondary education since life in camps offered them no opportunity to generate income. According to district authorities in Kitgum, the educational situation in Kitgum had been so badly affected that 80 percent of the schools in the district had found themselves displaced. Health facilities had also been affected. At St Joseph Hospital, a missionary medical facility, a children's ward built for 67 beds, had 700 admissions. Some mothers, unable to find space in the main building for their children, had set up makeshift beds on the verandahs as they waited to be attended to. Medical personnel said between 50 and 60 children were admitted at the hospital every day, suffering mainly from malaria or acute malnutrition. The hospital, however, had only one doctor and two clinical officers available to attend to them. "The workload is too much, the situation alarming. They come with malaria slides reading three to four plus, and you have nothing to do but to admit them. Two kids die here every day here," Dr Lillian Akello, the sole medical officer, told IRIN. Records at the hospital showed that acute malnutrition cases had a mortality rate of 18 percent, despite the admitted children being put on special diet to try save their lives. The local authorities in the districts of northern Uganda said because most of their people lived in camps, revenue from taxes that would have helped to supplement requirements for the health centres, had not been realised. Government grants, they added, were not only inadequate and tardy but their disbursement was also restricted. In Gulu, for example, the monthly health grant of about Ush 58 million (US $32,000) had been received only once over the previous six months. A district disaster committee set up to handle the situation had no money either. NIGHT COMMUTERS The team also visited people who leave their homes every evening and walk to sleep in towns, for fear of being abducted. There are about 40,000 such people, mostly mothers and their children, who have become known as "night commuters". Every evening, they take refuge in major towns, sleeping outside hospitals and community centres out of fear of LRA attacks. Security sources said the LRA routinely abducted children to serve as sex slaves or to forcibly join its fighting ranks. At least 12,000 children have been abducted over the last two years, according to UNICEF.