Northern Refugees Pressured to Vacate Camps

Christine Alanyo lives in the Lacor refugee camp, but would like nothing more than to finally settle in her home village, less than five kilometres away.



But Alanyo, 23, is afraid that as long as Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, remains free with his guerrilla force in the remote Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, there is every possibility that fighting will break out again in northern Uganda.



Peace talks between the LRA and Ugandan officials were suspended last year, and are due to resume in the coming weeks in Juba, South Sudan, but no date has been set.



Until Kony either signs a peace agreement with Uganda or is captured, Alanyo is reluctant to make more than daily visits to her village of Loka Akora, where she tends her garden and grows the food she needs to survive.



She told IWPR "there is no benefit” to moving back to the villages.



“We were last given food relief in July, 2007,” she said, contradicting the accusation made by some officials that the nearly two million internal refugees in northern Uganda are lingering in the 200 refugee camps to obtain food and medical supplies from aid agencies.



“I see no reason why we should be forced to leave the camp," said Alanyo.



Ugandan officials insist the refugees must vacate the camps and are proceeding to demolish their mud and thatched-roof huts.



Meanwhile, food supplies to the camps have dwindled to nothing, as part of the government strategy of forcing the refugees out.



This has been done at the government's request in order to force people into returning to their villages.



"I want the [refugees] to tell [us] exactly why they are still in the camps up to now," said Uganda’s minister for disaster preparedness, Tarsis Kabwegyere, during a recent tour of the camps.



Kabwegyere disagreed that local people still had legitimate reasons to feel insecure.



"You have very fertile land,” Kabwegyere told refugees. “It is better for you to go back home and dig your land instead of waiting for food, which is never enough."



Few in the camps would agree with him.



Caramella Akot, 52, said she is still waiting for the home “kits” consisting of corrugated metal roofing, hoes, machetes, seeds and other items that camp residents were promised by the government two years ago.



"The government should give us time to settle here because there is no grass to thatch our huts,” complained Akot. “We should be given iron sheets and tents if we are to move swiftly, but now we don't have building materials."



Charles Uma, the Gulu district secretary for disaster preparedness, said the government first asked refugees to vacate the camps in December 2006, but only about five per cent of them have left since then. Another 25 per cent have moved to smaller satellite camps not far from the main camps, and the remaining 70 per cent still live in the major camps.



"This has made our work very hard because instead of taking services directly to the villages, we are still helping the [refugees] who have again settled in satellite camps," said Uma.



Gulu’s district secretary for works and technical services Alex Otim said the hope was that if the refugees return to their villages now, it will help resolve the growing number of land disputes.



"Children who were born in the camps have to go to their ancestral homes so that they are shown their land boundaries to avoid future land wrangles," he said.



Otim noted that government support programmes will soon deliver services only to the villages.



"Our main target is geared towards developing the villages… not the camps,” he said. “This is how we shall manage to remove people who do not want to go back to their homes."



Aid groups that help the refugees must now support only those who have already gone home for good, he added.



Otim insists Kony and the LRA are unlikely to resume their war in the north.



"I believe Kony has no interest in coming to inflict suffering on his people, because … he wants to restore his reputation,” said Otim. “And since he is far away now, there is no way he can come back to commit grave atrocities that he did before."



Gulu resident district commissioner Walter Ochora said a committee will oversee the demolition of abandoned huts in the camps, which he said have become hideouts for armed thugs.



"Anyone who remains in the camp should know that the United Nations will still continue giving aid, but only to those who have gone back to the villages," said Ochora. But the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says it will continue providing aid to camp residents, insisting that the return process must be voluntary.



Refugees worry about their safety not only from a resurgence of the LRA, but from a growing wave of violent crime.



Moro Kibwota, 40, an official at the Lacor camp, said he and most others he knows face an uncertain future.



"People are being harassed by armed robbers, and such people are ready to disturb us when we go back home,” Kibwota told IWPR.



Security, not humanitarian aid, was why he stayed on at the camp. "I… am in the camp to protect my life,” he explained. “I am not so much interested in their relief, if that is why they are insisting that we leave the camps."



Ochora said that some former LRA men who had retained their guns may have rented them out to the thugs who are now terrorising villagers.



He also expressed sympathy with the refugees’ fears of a resurgent LRA, noting that the government recently denied permission for a delegation of some 400 people to meet Kony in this Congo camp.



Even the government, he said, is uncertain about Kony’s intentions.



"If the government is confident about the people's safety … then they will go,” said Ochora. “But at the moment, government is not yet clear.”



Alfred Obote, 43, who lives in the Alokolum camp, is pessimistic that the stalled LRA peace talks will bear fruit and does not plan to leave the camp until an agreement is signed.



"We are all aware that Kony has not been clear about the talks,” said Obote. “We haven't heard anything promising from him. He has not even accepted our pleas to release the children still in captivity.



"Many lives were lost during the war. The government should allow… refugees in the camps. If the talks succeed, then we shall just leave the camps without being told."



Caroline Ayugi is an IWPR contributor in northern Uganda.