UNITED NATIONS TO STEP UP SUPPORT FOR UGANDA’S 2 MILLION DISPLACED PEOPLE

UNITED NATIONS TO STEP UP SUPPORT FOR UGANDA ’S 2 MILLION DISPLACED PEOPLE

NAIROBI/GENEVA/NEW YORK, 21 November (OCHA) -- The United Nations system in Uganda is planning to increase its presence and programmes in northern Uganda in the coming year to help some 2 million Ugandans displaced by Africa’s longest running conflict, according to Dennis McNamara, Special Advisor on Displacement to the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Mr. McNamara, who had just spent a week in Uganda discussing the grave humanitarian crisis, also visited Kitgum in northern Uganda, where two staff of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been killed in recent weeks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  Nearly 2 million people have been displaced by the 19-year-old conflict between the Government and the LRA, 1.7 million of whom live in over 200 squalid and overcrowded camps, relying largely on international assistance to survive.  Estimates indicate that more than 1,000 people a week die from disease or violence, according to a July 2005 Ministry of Health/WHO mortality survey.

“This is one of the longest, largest, and least addressed humanitarian crises in the world today”, said Mr. McNamara.  “It has uprooted as many people as the Bosnian war did 10 years ago, but gets only a fraction of the international attention.”

The UN is planning to further increase its international presence in Uganda next year, especially through its main humanitarian organisations including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).  It will also increase its request for funding for humanitarian programmes to more than $200 million for 2006.

“But we need the Government of Uganda to do much more,” said Mr. McNamara.  “They must provide security for the agencies to work, safe access, and better assistance and protection for the displaced people.  They also need to ensure safe freedom of movement for those who want to go home.  The Government has the primary responsibility for the long-suffering Ugandans, and they need to do much more.”

Despite the lack of assistance and insecurity, some 400,000 displaced people in Teso and Lango have returned home, or are returning, to cultivate their fields before the next planting season in March.  They urgently need more agricultural support.

“All actors -- the UN, the NGOs, the Ugandan Government, and donor Governments -- need to do considerably more, and to increase their assistance if this long-neglected tragedy is to be overcome”, said Mr. McNamara.

For further information, please call:  Stephanie Bunker, OCHA New York, tel:  +1 917 367 5126, mobile:  +1 917 892 1679; Kristen Knutson, OCHA New York, tel.:  +1 917 367 9262; Elizabeth Byrs, OCHA Geneva, tel.:  +41 22 917 2653, mobile:  +41 79 473 4570.

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For information media • not an official record