US to donate $27 m to improve food security in north

//CCORECTED REPEAT//The United States is to contribute US $27 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) for food aid in northern Uganda, Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the UN food agencies, said on Monday. "The funds will support a new, expanded relief operation that will provide targeted food-assistance to approximately 2.6 million IDPs [internally displaced persons], refugees, and other vulnerable groups in Uganda," the ambassador said. Hall was on a two-day visit to the northern Ugandan district of Gulu, about 380 km north of the capital, Kampala. There he met the chairman of the district council, Walter Ochola, who called on the international community to rescue the people of the region from the effects of nearly two decades of war. America’s contribution is to be made through USAID’s Food for Peace programme, which will support school-food programmes and provide dietary support for people living with HIV/AIDS, among other things. "In 2004, the US supplied, through WFP [the UN World Food Programme], more than half of all humanitarian food supplies delivered to northern Uganda, and this contribution was worth approximately $56 million," Hall said. Meanwhile, Ochola confirmed that on Friday, rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) mutilated three women who had gone to collect firewood in Kitgum district. He said the rebels had chopped off the lips, ears and breasts of the women, who were now recuperating in hospital. These attacks follow similar mutilations earlier in March, when rebel soldiers cut off the lips of eight internally displaced women who had left their camp to fetch water. The Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) said on Monday that it had rescued almost 60 captives and killed more than 20 rebels over the previous week. "We rescued 59 captives in Apac and Gulu districts between 15 and 19 March, and also killed 26 LRA fighters during the same period," Lt Tabaro Kiconco, UPDF’s northern-based spokesman, told IRIN. Northern and eastern Uganda has been the backdrop to a 19-year war between the government and the LRA, which has virtually destroyed the region’s economy and social structures. Tens of thousands have been killed, while the government puts the number of IDPs at more than 1.4 million, most of whom are entirely dependent on food aid for survival.