U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2002 - Uganda

Violence kept an estimated 500,000 Ugandans internally displaced at the end of 2001, including at least 50,000 persons who became newly uprooted during the year. About 20,000 Ugandans were refugees, including some 10,000 in Congo-Kinshasa, about 5,000 in Sudan, and 5,000 in Kenya.

Uganda hosted approximately 175,000 refugees at year's end, including about 150,000 from Sudan, nearly 15,000 from Rwanda, some 8,000 from Congo-Kinshasa, and 1,000 from Somalia. An estimated 10,000 new refugees and asylum seekers fled to Uganda during the year, although some rapidly departed before the year ended.

Background

Despite relative peace and economic growth in much of Uganda, armed insurgencies and violent communal clashes have plagued three areas of the country for years, causing an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 deaths. The U.S. government placed two Ugandan rebel groups on its list of international terrorist organizations during 2001. Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans remained internally displaced, including many who originally fled their homes in 1996.

The security situation improved somewhat during 2001. Rebel attacks on villages and ambushes along rural highways occurred less frequently than in previous years, while the number of Ugandans in need of humanitarian assistance declined by nearly half during 2001, to about 600,000.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni announced on national radio in late 2001 that "I would like to assure those Ugandans that are still in those [displacement] camps that they will be able to go back to their homes" in 2002.

UN officials warned in late 2001 that "the humanitarian crisis in Uganda is far from over" and noted that the country's humanitarian programs were poorly funded by donor nations. UN relief agencies received less than half of the $80 million needed to assist Ugandans during 2001.

Northern Uganda: Displacement

An insurgent force known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) continued to raid towns, displacement camps, and refugee sites in northern Uganda for the fifteenth year. The group appeared to have virtually no political ideology beyond violence and looting. LRA combatants and previous rebel forces in the north have abducted some 30,000 people since 1986, including nearly 6,000 persons who were still missing in 2001, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

LRA attacks killed 115 people during 2001, the Ugandan government reported. The insurgent force seemed to weaken considerably late in the year, undermined by a government amnesty program and declining support for the group by the neighboring government of Sudan.

Up to 400,000 persons remained uprooted in northern Uganda during the year. Some lived in displacement camps, while 300,000 or more crowded into "protected villages" designated by the government. Some resided in the villages voluntarily, but many reportedly lived there involuntarily amid inadequate services and frequent abuses by government soldiers deployed to protect the towns.

Displaced persons in protected villages suffered "appalling conditions" tantamount to "detention," a report by northern Ugandan community leaders charged during the year. The report charged that displaced persons were beaten, raped, and robbed by government soldiers and insurgents, and were often caught in cross fire. Community leaders in the north expressed concern about increased prostitution and other signs of deteriorating social values among the uprooted population.

Fear of abduction and murder was the most prominent concern of displaced adolescents in northern Uganda, according to a survey during 2001 by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC), based in the United States. The survey found that uprooted adolescents were widely worried about child abuse, violent separation from their families, and the difficulty of obtaining an education.

Uganda's president acknowledged that poverty had worsened in the north, fueled by ongoing security problems that had devastated local economies. An outbreak of bubonic plague during 2001 followed an outbreak of ebola virus a year earlier. Infant mortality in the north's Gulu District was double the rate in the rest of the country, according to local community leaders. The World Food Program (WFP) provided food rations to displaced families and daily school lunches to 70,000 students in the north.

Government officials discussed a plan to transfer uprooted people from overcrowded protected villages to smaller, dispersed sites closer to their homes. Officials called the plan "decongestion." Some local residents opposed the strategy because they preferred to return to their original homes when security improved. UN officials supported the decongestion plan as a way to resettle permanently some displaced families "who may not opt to return home under any conditions."

Organized transfers to new decongestion sites did not occur during 2001. As security gradually improved late in the year, however, some displaced persons began to farm and travel farther outside protected villages, making short trips to their original homes to assess conditions for their eventual return.

Northeast Uganda: Displacement

Violence and population upheaval worsened in northeast Uganda for the second consecutive year. An estimated 80,000 persons remained displaced in the region at the end of 2001.

Historical tensions among local residents over land use, drought, and cattle raiding have become more deadly in recent years with the proliferation of rifles. Ethnic Karamojong conducted more than 50 armed raids against neighboring communities during 2001, pushing tens of thousands of people from their homes even as similar numbers were returning home elsewhere in the northeast after raids in 2000.

Most new displacement occurred in Katakwi District, where more than one-third of the population fled their homes. Raiders killed 15 persons at one of the area's 46 displacement camps.

Conditions in the makeshift camps were "very poor" with little or no humanitarian assistance, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in September. Some camp occupants suffered malnutrition as Karamojong raiders destroyed crops planted on the outskirts of displacement sites. Although illnesses such as malaria, respiratory infections, pneumonia, intestinal worms, and diarrhea afflicted the uprooted population, health clinics were a ten-mile (15 km) walk from some camps.

Local officials requested the equivalent of $5 million to assist uprooted families in the northeast. The national government announced a $900,000 health program. UN relief officials criticized Ugandan authorities and donor nations for largely ignoring humanitarian needs in northeast Uganda.

Western Uganda: Displacement

A rebel group known as the Alliance for Democratic Forces (ADF) continued to mount occasional hit-and-run attacks, but much less frequently than in previous years. The ADF's strongest attack killed 10 persons in the town of Kasese in March.

Six years of ADF violence had left some 70,000 persons internally displaced by the end of 2001. Displacement camps typically were overcrowded, lacked adequate drinking water, had poor sanitation, and offered little or no health care, UN aid workers reported. Heavy rains occasionally blocked the main highway to the region, impeding relief deliveries in November.

Some uprooted families returned home as security improved late in the year, while many others opted, for safety reasons, to remain semi-uprooted by residing part-time at their homes and farms and part-time in one of 50 displacement sites. Some families established new displacement camps closer to their homes as cautious first steps toward reintegration.

Government officials urged most western residents to go home in November. However, a report by African Rights, an international human rights agency, warned that "it will be a challenge to address the extent of the social and economic damage" caused by the insurgency.

Refugees in Uganda

Uganda had "a liberal refugee policy," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported in 2001. Many refugees – though not all – lived in settlements rather than in camps, and received farmland to grow their own food. The government and UNHCR pursued a "self-reliance strategy" meant to integrate services for refugees and local residents alike. Government officials announced a national health-care strategy during 2001 that included medical services for refugees, which UNHCR called "a welcome development."

The government granted automatic refugee status to refugees from Sudan and Congo-Kinshasa, while authorities usually conducted interviews with asylum seekers from other countries to judge whether they warranted refugee status. A nationwide census of the refugee population in July 2001 found that about 170,000 refugees lived in Uganda – 60,000 fewer than previous estimates.

Funding shortfalls forced UNHCR to curtail numerous assistance projects during the year. The agency canceled plans to drill new water holes, slowed repairs to health clinics, cut assistance to disabled refugees, and delayed installation of latrines at refugees' schools.

More than 500 refugees in Uganda permanently settled in other countries as part of an international resettlement program operated by UNHCR and foreign governments. About 300 refugees resettled from Uganda to the United States. More than 30 Sudanese refugees who failed to gain resettlement to the United States were arrested when they protested at the UNHCR office in Kampala, the capital. UNHCR charged that the 30 refugees attempted to manipulate the process by using "arm-twisting tactics."

Refugees from Sudan

Large numbers of Sudanese refugees have lived in northern Uganda for years because of civil war in their own country. Refugee movements back and forth across the border have become common.

The overwhelming majority of the 150,000 Sudanese refugees lived in 25 designated settlements and nearly equaled the local population in some districts. Nearly 90 percent had access to farmland, but only about one-quarter of the refugees grew enough food to become self-sufficient. About 70,000 received partial food aid, while nearly 45,000 were fully dependent on food relief. Fear of attacks by Ugandan rebels prevented refugees from expanding their agricultural activities.

Some 55,000 Sudanese refugee children attended more than 80 primary schools and some 40 secondary schools. Aid workers reported mixed success in their efforts to persuade more girls to attend primary schools.

As in previous years, refugee protection remained a problem. Ugandan guerrillas have killed approximately 120 Sudanese refugees since 1996, including three during 2001. More than 1,000 refugees temporarily fled their settlement site because of rebel attacks during the year, and 13 refugees were abducted before being released.

Sudanese rebels regularly entered refugee sites in northern Uganda to recruit new soldiers, according to a local humanitarian agency. Female refugees suffered rapes and other violence at the hands of Ugandan soldiers and male refugees, a WCRWC report found.

Refugees from Rwanda

Nearly 15,000 Rwandan refugees lived primarily at the Nakivale, Oruchinga, and Kyaka II settlements in southern Uganda.

Some refugees partially supported themselves, but disputes with local residents over farmland posed "a serious problem" and hampered refugees' ability to feed themselves, UNHCR reported. Refugees who had arrived in Uganda since 1996 received full food rations; those who had arrived before 1996 received half-rations.

More than 2,000 refugee students attended primary schools. The two main refugee camps offered literacy programs attended primarily by women, as well as training in carpentry and tailoring.

Ugandan authorities expressed concern about an undisclosed number of former Rwandan soldiers who arrived in the country during 2001. After government officials urged UNHCR to transfer the former soldiers to another country, the refugee agency reported in November that the refugee status of the former soldiers was uncertain, pending closer screening.

Refugees from Congo-Kinshasa

About 8,000 refugees from Congo-Kinshasa (also known as the Democratic Republic of Congo) lived at four designated sites, primarily in southwest Uganda.

Some 5,000 Congolese fled into Uganda with about 25,000 head of cattle during the year, but many rapidly returned home voluntarily. About 1,000 of the new arrivals stayed in the country.

Camp residents received food, health care, and access to education. Refugees were unable to provide for themselves because local residents refused to loan them large plots of farmland.

Ugandan rebels attacked Kyangwali camp and its 5,000 Congolese inhabitants in March, but government troops repulsed the assault without harm to the refugee population. A similar attack six months earlier killed two refugees.