UN appeals for aid for Uganda and Tanzania
KAMPALA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $128 million to help tackle a humanitarian crisis in Uganda, where an escalating civil war and drought have displaced more than a million people.
The U.N. also asked donors for around $39 million in refugee aid for impoverished Tanzania, home to more refugees than any other country in Africa.
In Uganda, mounting attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have nearly doubled the number of internally displaced people since March 2002, officials said. A drought in the northeast is also aggravating the humanitarian crisis.
"It is estimated that over 1,239,682 persons are displaced in 12 districts either affected by conflict or by drought," said a UN report released in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
The LRA has been fighting the government for 17 years, slicing off the lips and limbs of its victims and snatching tens of thousands of children from villages and forcing them to work as soldiers, cooks and sex slaves.
In neighbouring Tanzania, the U.N was seeking just under $39 million to fund various projects for refugees and local people in 2004.
"In the five most affected districts of the Kagera and Kigoma regions, up to one third of the population are refugees," U.N. Resident coordinator John Hendra told a news conference in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.
Some 480,000 people who fled fighting in neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo live in camps in western Tanzania under the care of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A similar number, mostly believed to be from Burundi, are thought to live in the local community.
Burundi's government and biggest rebel group agreed to share power at a summit in Dar es Salaam on Sunday -- a move that may prompt many refugees to return home from Tanzania.
11/19/03 07:57 ET
