![MISERY: Children look at an IDP camp burnt down by rebels]( "MISERY: Children look at an IDP camp burnt down by rebels") |
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MISERY: Children look at an IDP camp burnt down by rebels |
--If Uganda can donate money to the US it can repatriate the IDPs
By Abu Mayanja
It is high time the Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps were disbanded and the millions of people affected allowed to go back to their homes and pick up the lives they have not known for nearly a generation. This should be done now.
When the decision to herd up the people was taken more than 15 years ago, no one would have believed that the camps would remain in operation for more than a few years. But that is what has happened.
Despite the latest claim that Joseph Kony has got only a few thugs left who have trekked with him far into southern Sudan and that the UPDF would finish him off in 30 minutes if the Sudan government allowed our boys to follow him up, there are not many people outside the UPDF who believe that we are about to see the end of him, next week or next month. Had this been the case, I am sure our government would have exercised its right
of hot
pursuit (stretched a little bit) and followed him up and finished him off within 30 minutes or even 30 hours.
Considering that the Sudan has been allowing the UPDF to fight Kony on Sudan territory for more than two years now, I do not believe a little intrusion into territory a little further north would cause any diplomatic hiccup between the two governments, especially if the UPDF went in and came out without inflicting any damage to the Sudanese people or property. But we are not going to do this and the 30 minutes timetable joins the company of the dozens of similar earlier time- frames for finishing off Kony which have been given from time to time but which are never honoured.
On the other hand, the indefinite herding of millions of our people in northern Uganda into camps has done a lot of physical, social, psychological and cultural damage to them without noticeably boosting up their security. Recently, a respectable international organisation reported
that
the people of northern Uganda were dying at the devastating rate of 1000 per week. One thousand real people, not mere statistics!
About two years ago, Kony made a daring attack on one of these camps, burnt down the huts, killed some inmates, abducted a few others and calmly marched off to where he came from all in the presence, sight and hearing of UPDF and other security personnel who were supposed to be guarding the camps. Up to now, I havent heard what punishment has been meted out on those whose duty it was to protect this camp but who failed so miserably. And even when the camps are not burnt down like this one was, people will continue to be occasionally abducted and food looted.
Coupled with the IDP camps is the existence of the so-called commuters. Girls and boys commute everyday to towns in order to seek safety by sleeping on shop verandas and street pavements, and then return to their villages in the mornings to cultivate the fields or forage for f
ood. Can
you imagine your child commuting day in, day out every week, month, years, five years in search of the safety of sleeping on a shop veranda or a street pavement?
Those in the camps live, according to reports, in really atrocious conditions characterised by over-crowding, absence of privacy, poor sanitation, insufficient food and water. I have not checked the budgetary provisions, but it is common knowledge that these people depend entirely on food provided by the World Food Programme, and that the Uganda government provides little or no additional food to what the WFP dolls out. Now one of the agencies that carry out the actual dishing out of the food has warned that food is fast running out for the sustenance of the inmates of the IDP camps, and there is no money to buy more!
Clearly, in these circumstances the Government cannot or should not continue to hold onto the camps. They should be destroyed and the people allowed to go back to their villages of co
urse
with rations of food, seeds and implements to enable them start a new life.
Since Kony has run so far away into the Sudan, it is difficult to see why it makes military or security sense to continue holding these people in the camps and as the UPDF is still so large in personnel, (there are plans to cut it down) it ought to be possible to provide security to the people in the north in their villages. Konys favourite methods of abducting people at wells should be guarded and people organised to fetch water in big groups, or convoys. Equally, since Kony has no motorised transport and no air power, it should be relatively easy to prevent his further incursions into Uganda from Sudan by ambushing him at the border, given that there was a will and determination to get to grips with him. And our Government should step up efforts to provide food, medicine and other necessities to the people in northern Uganda, so that they dont die in such unacceptably high numbers.
If
Government can donate emergency assistance to the United States to help with Hurricane Katrina victims (although it did not give such aid toward the countries affected by tsunami in southeastern Asia) it can immediately organise and execute the repatriation of our people in Acholi, Lango and elsewhere back to their homes leaving the IDP camps as just a horrible memory in our collective psyche.
As the Netherlands Ambassador to Uganda said a few days ago, while donating sh5.5b to the World Food Programme for feeding people in the camps, the situation will only improve if people can return to their villages. Lt. Gen Moses Ali and the rest of the Government should please note this.
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