Ugandan families sent home to poor basic services

Hardly any of the families being sent home from camps in Uganda can expect basic services like clean water when they get back. Refugees being sent home from camps in the north of Uganda are returning to villages left without basic medical facilities, electricity or schools. The war between government troops and the Lord's Resistance Army forced more than a million people into camps in northern Uganda. Since the 2006 ceasefire, about two thirds have left the camps. And fewer than 30% of the families going back to the villages will be able to get clean drinking water, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). In a report out in September the IDMC said that public services were failing to meet the demands of returning refugees.

There’s serious worry for the fate of HIV-positive refugees who may not be able to get essential care and drug treatment when they return. Some aid agencies have been trying to make sure that wherever they move, people with the virus can get hold of antiretroviral drugs through, community distribution programmes. The East African country’s government information minister, Kabakumba Masiko, admitted that while closing the refugee camps was "long overdue", the facilities in areas that were evacuated during two decades of civil unrest "may not be sufficient".But the government would rehabilitate the schools, health centres and roads, and provide safe clean water in the villages people were returning to, she said. "The government is committed to providing all the basic facilities and services [and] has committed funds under the peace, recovery and development plan for these purposes," she told the United Nations news service, IRIN. So far, six camps have been closed in Gulu district, and another 60 in the districts of Gulu, Amuru, Pader and Kitgum have been recommended to be phased-out by November.

Food shortages will be another worry for those going back to their villages. Hunger has soared in Uganda over the last 15 years from 12 million in 1992 to 17.7 million in 2007, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The FAO said it has seen a widespread increase in demand for food aid over the past few years, largely due to failing harvests and rising food prices. "We have witnessed calls for more food aid to people who were previously feeding themselves," said an FAO spokesman interviewed for New Vision.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children