Author: WHES

(Kampala, April 8, 2004) I arrived in Uganda on September 15, 2003 to begin my first year as a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow, placed with the United States Agency for International Development’s Uganda mission. A few months before I arrived I was told that I would be acting as the Humanitarian Response Coordinator for the mission, working on emergency projects in response to the conflict in northern Uganda. I am ashamed to admit that at the time I had almost no idea that this war even existed. Like a lot of the world, when I thought about Uganda at all it was as an African success story, the country that had lowered its HIV/AIDS rate from over 30% to 6% in ten years, the Pearl of Africa. The story of its 18-year war was a revelation to me in more ways than one.

Women divide a sack of beans among their households during a distribution in Opit IDP camp in northern Uganda. Food aid provides roughly 50% of the daily food needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs).

For almost two decades now, the Lord’s Resistance Army has waged a campaign of terror on the Acholi people. Rebels murder, maim and abduct thousands of men, women and children each year, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes for the relative safety of congested displacement camps. I had been in Uganda for a week when I saw a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) for the first time. As a typical child of the American suburbs, my imaginings of what a “refugee camp” looked like owed a lot to television news and media pleas from international relief organizations depicting abject, helpless Africans.

What I saw was heartbreaking, but different from what I’d pictured. I walked around the camp with a column of children tailing me at a safe distance, stepping over the open sewage ditches that crisscrossed the camp and watching moonfaced malnourished children play in rubbish heaps. Women and children stood in endless queues waiting for a single jerrican of water, which my companions explained was better than risking abduction and illness to collect water from the muddy ponds outside the camp. Men, unable to leave the camp to work in their fields, sat in despondent clusters, staring and drinking waragi. But what I felt most strongly was the settled, inured mood of the place and people. The Acholi have been living in displaced isolation for more than a decade, cut off from the outside world and even the most basic services. In the face of chronic fear and deprivation, they have exercised that most human of traits: they have adapted to their conditions, appalling as they are.

I had come to the camp with a World Food Program convoy bringing food aid to its residents. Cut off from their land, the IDPs are almost wholly dependent on their rations of beans, maize, vegetable oil and corn-soya blend (CSB) donated by the US and other industrialized nations. The general food distribution sent a thrill through the camp as (I was to realize later) does any visit the IDPs receive from the outside world. Women materialized from the huts around the clearing with basins and sacks on their heads, children ran laughing through the crowd, scooping handfuls of spilt CSB into their mouths, and old men shook my hand and thanked me for “the food from America.” I felt deeply ashamed. I was aware of myself as the walking embodiment of overfed western carelessness, but as I moved through the crowd I was greeted with grateful smiles and blessings from all sides as if I were some magnanimous, selfless benefactor. As if I personally was responsible for the IDPs’ good fortune that day. Just weeks before, I had had no conception of these people and their lives; they had not existed to me and now I was being thanked for acknowledging their presence and their plight. It struck me that the sacks of grain being unloaded from the trucks represented millions of Americans just like me, well intentioned and yet mostly ignorant of the consequences of our actions.

During the seven months I have lived in Uganda, the number of people displaced by the war has risen from 800,000 to more than 1.5 million and has spread to cover eight districts. Every week there is news of more deaths and abductions, every few days another bloody scene is splashed across the front pages of the national newspapers. But in my time here I’ve realized that the victims of this war are not the helpless Africans of American televised lore, and that while our aid may be of assistance in the short term, we need to avoid confusing people who need help with helpless people. These are people, families, who are trading away part of their households, their culture and themselves in order to survive in a world they had no part in making. This is life’s reality for more than 35 million refugees and IDPs around the world.

Due to lack of classrooms and teachers in the camps, many IDP children cannot attend school, especially girls.

When I think about the world in these terms, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by responsibility, and the knowledge that as an American I am complicit in the suffering of so many people. But being complicit means I have a hand, a choice in the way the future plays out. My time in Uganda so far has showed me that the first step in that choice is to keep my eyes open and next, not to let the things I see make me feel I am helpless to act for change. This is how Uganda’s forgotten war has helped me to remember my place in the world.

This year Hunger Notes will publish articles and letters from the Congressional Hunger Center’s Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellows to give our readers a real-life sense of what hunger looks like around the world. This program, named after former U.S. Representative Mickey Leland, sends fellows to work with the world’s leading anti-hunger organizations so they may know what hungry people experience, and so they may then have better tools to craft policies and practices that serve these individuals. Because Leland Fellows live and work in places like northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Bolivia, and Indonesia, they have first-hand knowledge of issues that can cause food insecurity – issues like HIV/AIDS, conflict, poor governance, and drought. More importantly, they know real children, real mothers, and real grandparents who shoulder the real problem of global hunger. What is to be done about hunger? The Leland Fellows will share their stories and struggles in responding to this question here in Hunger Notes. For more information about the Congressional Hunger Center and the International Hunger Fellows program visit the CHC website.

For additional information on the war in northern Uganda see Northern Uganda Conflict is Worse than Iraq BBC November 10, 2003 and IRIN Web Special on Northern Uganda: “When the sun sets, we start to worry” IRIN January 2004

A young man transports his family’s ration from the distribution site to his hut at Opit IDP camp in northern Uganda.

A severely malnourished girl receives some fortified porridge at a therapeutic feeding center at Gulu Hospital in northern Uganda. It is estimated that only 20% of children in need of supplementary feeding in northern Uganda actually receive it.

(Nairobi, March 13, 2004) Severe food shortages and malnutrition will continue to plague hundreds of thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) unless insecurity comes to an end, the deputy executive director of the UN World Food Program (WFP), Sheila Sisulu, said on Friday.

“Efforts to provide humanitarian assistance are routinely hampered by the activities of armed militias in many areas,” she said. “We have been heartened by the recent positive political developments and call on all groups to lay down their arms and give peace a chance.”

She was speaking in Kinshasa, the capital, at the end of a six-day visit to the DRC, during which she traveled to the war-ravaged east to see first-hand the plight of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), most of whom are women and children.

“The DRC is rich and fertile, we would not need to provide much relief food if there was no conflict in the country,” she said. “Peace and progress in the DRC would benefit the whole region.”

According to WFP, at least 3.4 million people have been internally displaced by conflict in the country, in which 73 percent of the total population is undernourished. Many of the worst affected are in the most inaccessible regions, where roads are frequently impassable and security uncertain.

Sisulu said the most shocking reality she encountered was the widespread sexual violence against women.

“It is inhuman what these women have been through,” she said. “I’m deeply disturbed by their accounts. We ignore the mothers of the next generation at our peril. Our first priority is to save lives but we must also help people put their lives back together. There is no better place to start than with the mothers of the nation.”

Although comprehensive statistics on the number of rape victims are unavailable, WFP reported that between March and June 2003, some 5,000 cases of rape were registered. However, it added that such figures were “only the tip of the iceberg” as many thousands more cases went unreported.

WFP said it was providing food to the few clinics able to offer medical and psychological support required by traumatized women.

Furthermore, the agency said the needs of children were equally urgent and, to this end, it was assisting projects helping to demobilize and reintegrate the estimated 30,000 child soldiers enrolled with armed factions in the country.

In Kinshasa, Sisulu announced the launch of WFP’s school feeding program in the DRC, as part of a worldwide initiative through which children are provided with a lunchtime meal in order to encourage them to attend school and complete their primary education.

WFP said it was also supporting government efforts in the struggle against HIV/AIDS by supplying food to some 10,000 people infected with the disease.

WFP reported that some two million people were benefiting from its programs in the DRC, at a total cost of about US $196 million.

IRIN is a United Nations humanitarian information unit. This article may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All materials in this article copyright by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004. This article first appeared on IRIN

(BANGUI, March 3, 2004) Cotton farmer Faustin Bagaza, 55, wears the cloak of poverty around him even tighter these days. Despite harvesting his crop for two successive years, he has made no sales. The reason? A rebellion in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) that has devastated the country’s agriculture, health, education and other services.

“I have kept the cotton I harvested in 2002 and 2003 in my house and nobody has come to buy it,” he told IRIN on 26 February. Bagaza lives in Sibut, Kemo Province, 185 km northeast of the nation’s capital, Bangui. He has been able to keep his three children at Sibut Secondary School, despite his meagre earnings and despite not having planted cotton in 2004.

Bagaza’s situation is not unique. Poverty seems to be the experience of most people in the northwest, an area that bore the brunt of a six-month rebellion waged by former army chief of staff Francois Bozize against President Ange-Felix Patasse. The rebellion ended on 15 March 2003 when Bozize overthrew Patasse.

History of civil strife

The country has undergone several armed conflicts since the mid-1990s that badly affected the population. But unlike the 1996-7 mutinies and the May 2001 coup attempt by former leader Andre Kolingba, which affected a section of Bangui residents, Bozize’s October 2002 to March 2003 rebellion wrecked havoc in five provinces: Ouham, Ouham Pende, Nana Grebizi, Kemo and parts of Ombella Mpoko. Thousands of people abandoned their homes for the bush or for neighbouring Chad.

As a result of the rebellion, most peasant farmers lost two planting seasons and have had no buyers for their last cotton harvest; health and educational facilities were looted, exposing people to diseases and epidemics; and insecurity increased in villages as armed robbers acquired modern guns and ammunition.

So far, an estimated 41,000 refugees remain in southern Chad, afraid to return home because of continued insecurity, the collapse of infrastructure, and destruction of villages.

To assess the situation and to prick the conscience of the international community to the plight of people living in the northwest, a mission of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) arrived in the country on 22 February for a two-week evaluation tour.

Headed by Special Humanitarian Adviser Ramiro Lopes Da Silva, the mission toured the provinces of Kemo, Nana Grebizi and Ouham from 26 to 28 February. Besides other OCHA officials, those from the UN Children’s Fund, the UN Development Program, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN World Food Program (WFP) accompanied Da Silva.

Plight of cotton farmers

The UN mission found that despite the adverse impact of the rebellion on the cotton-rich northwest, farmers had been picking their cotton – their major source of income – since 2002. Unfortunately, the cotton factory in Bossangoa, 305 km north of Bangui, was looted during the rebellion and its equipment taken to Chad by former rebels loyal to Bozize. Consequently, the Société Centrafricaine de Developpement des textiles (Socadetex), which was the only taker, was unable to buy from the farmers.

“Together with Socadetex, we began in January a campaign among farmers to encourage them to resume cotton farming,” Jean de Dieu Sepokode, the deputy governor of Sibut, told IRIN.

He said Socadetex would rehabilitate its factories and could buy this year’s cotton harvests.

On 3 February, CAR Prime Minister Celestin Gaombalet set up a committee to coordinate the rehabilitation of cotton factories in Bossangoa and Bambari, 385 km northeast of Bangui.

In villages along the road from Sibut to Kabo, a town 260 km north of Sibut in Ouham Province, farmers like Bruno Gona dumped cotton on the road for lack of storage room in their homes.

“The cotton I have in my house is worth up to 300,000 francs CFA [US $580],” Bruno Gona, a 25 year-old cotton farmer from the village of Patcho, 60 km south of Kabo in Nana Grebizi Province, told IRIN on 27 February.

In 2003, when an oil and soap firm, the Huilerie, Savonnerie de Centrafrique (Husaca) learnt of the cotton farmers’ plight, it urged them to switch to maize and pledged to buy their crops. However, when the maize was harvested, the firm failed to keep its promise.

“We have stored our maize harvests in one of the village chief’s houses as we wait for a buyer,” Gona added.

Health care beyond the reach of many

Due to the extreme and widespread poverty resulting from the destruction of cotton factories, people in the northwest have opted for traditional medicines when ill, given that they are cheaper and more readily available than modern medicines in hospitals and pharmacies.

Since the end of an emergency medical aid programme in December 2003, implemented by the Roman Catholic Association des Ouevres Medicales des Eglises en Centrafrique (Assomesca), drug prices have soared beyond the reach of the average citizen.

Paul Nganda, a medical assistant in Sibut Hospital, one of those previously covered by the Assomesca’s program, told IRIN on 26 February that the number of patients reporting to the hospital had decreased 50 percent since January.

He said that during Assomesca’s program, an adult paid 600 francs CFA (US $1.17) and a child 250 francs (49 US cents) for consultation, medication and hospitalization where necessary.

“Now all depends on the type of treatment the patients needs or on the duration of his hospitalization,” Nganda said.

He added that the cost could increase from 3,000 to 5,000 francs ($5.89 to $9.83). Most patients in the hospital complained of malaria, parasites, respiratory infections and tuberculosis (TB).

A laboratory technician at Sibut Hospital, Raul Abrou, told IRIN six patients had tested positive for TB in February and that they were being treated free of charge.

Cheap and dangerous drugs

The increase of health care costs has pushed people to rely on unauthorized street-side drug sellers. These drugs, though cheaper than those sold in hospital, pose a danger to consumers.

Felicite Kodromoundjou, a mother of five selling cassava in Sibut market, said she could not afford modern medicines and her children’s schooling from the 300 to 600 francs CFA that she earned from daily sales.

Gona said in order to seek medication at the Patcho health center, 50 meters from his house, he had to sell a basket of cassava or maize.

“If nobody buys it, as it is usually the case, then I take the traditional medicine made out of a mixture of roots and leaves,” he said.

Moreover, several villagers have returned home with tropical ulcers after spending months hidden in the forests. The disease starts with bacteria and then other parasites entering the body, causing a painful and itchy pimple on the skin that, once scratched, erupts to expose a grotesque sore.

“If not treated on time, it provokes gangrene and necessitates amputation,” Dr. Joseph Foumbi, a UNICEF representative, told IRIN on 27 February.

He added that malnutrition offered a fertile breeding ground for the disease. In Nana Outa village, 480 km northeast of Bangui in Nana Grebizi Province, the disease appeared in early January and affected mostly children. One parent told IRIN that 42 of 269 children in the village’s primary school had been sent home for treatment and to avoid risks of contaminating others.

“The only treatment we offer is to wash the wound with eau d’Aquin [a disinfectant],” Clement Kakodamba, a nurse running the village’s health center, told IRIN.

Serious cases are referred to the larger health center at Ouandago village, 12 km to the north. The only medical assistant at the Ouandago health center, Desire Badapou, said he received an average of 10 to 12 patients daily with the ulcer but was able to heal them with a combination of antibiotics. However, he said, his drug stock was almost depleted while the number of patients continued to increase.

Schools lack stationery

On the education front, school activities in the northwest resumed in June 2003, three months after the end of the rebellion. The school year 2003-2004 began in December 2003 with children and teachers starting classes without notebooks and pens.

One of the two teachers at Patcho Primary School, Appolinaire Assana, said that UNICEF had donated three notebooks and a pen to each of the 302 pupils in October 2003 but that the school had since run out of stationery.

The school was among those that had been receiving food from the WFP since December 2003, under the agency’s school feeding program in four war-affected provinces. This, Assana said, had encouraged children to attend class and prompted those still in hiding to come home.

Insecurity persists

However, despite the gains in education and agriculture, insecurity has persisted in the country. The phenomenon of armed highwaymen roaming the country on horseback has existed since the early 1980s but has intensified more recently with modern arms and more ammunition in circulation due to war. The most affected provinces are Nana Grebizi, Ouham and Ouham Pende and others in the east, where roads are impassable or non-existent.

On 23 February, six highwaymen on horseback armed with AK-47 assault rifles raided the village of Donzi, 255 km north of Bangui in Ouham Province, and wounded two villagers after stealing their property. In response, the village youth have formed a self-defense vigilante group of 27 volunteers, armed with hunting rifles.

One of the volunteers patrolling the village round the clock is, Jean Mamadou. He told IRIN on 28 February that during the Donzi attack there had been a battle of a few hours before the robbers overwhelmed the villagers. It was the fourth on the village since November 2003, he said.

“All the activities have ceased and nobody can go to his farm or to other villages’ markets,” Mamadou said.

He added that the volunteers only had three bullets remaining. Following the attack, seven government soldiers were sent to the village to support the volunteers.
In Kabo, 446 km north of Bangui and 60 km from the Chadian border, cattle herders returning from exile in Chad are reportedly armed with modern guns and were letting their cattle invade villagers’ farms.

A former rebel waiting for integration into the army and now on duty in Kabo, Desire Jassara, told IRIN on 27 February that security forces had recently arrested a cattle herder with an AK-47.

The insecurity is an extra burden to the villagers as their homes were burnt during the war in Kabo District. In fact, increased insecurity is one of the reasons why refugees are still reluctant to return home. Before the rebellion Kabo District had an estimated 22,700 residents. The district’s secretary, Come Sama, told IRIN that now there were 18,000 people in the district, the rest having fled to refugee in camps in southern Chad.

Nearly a year after Bozize’s coup, the populations in the northwest are still grappling with the impact of the rebellion. With time, they hope normalcy will return to their lives once again

IRIN is a United Nations humanitarian information unit. This article may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All materials in this article copyright by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004. This article first appeared on IRIN at http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39802

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JOHANNESBURG, February 19, 2004 (IRIN) Namibia’s land reform process is being questioned by some who find the pace too slow, while others argue that its benefits are debatable.

The Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act of 1995 provides for the acquisition of agricultural land by the government, for redistribution to Namibians “who do not own, or otherwise have the use of, agricultural land, or adequate agricultural land and, foremost, to those Namibian citizens who have been socially, economically or educationally disadvantaged by past discriminatory laws or practices”.

The land reform process in Namibia is based on a “willing-seller, willing-buyer” principle, with the government having first option on any commercial farm for sale.

Only 30,720 people out of an estimated 243,000 landless Namibians were resettled by 2003, and critics have said the country’s piecemeal land reform had moved far too slowly since independence in 1990, and delivered far too few tangible benefits to its land-hungry citizens.

The government has countered that its hands were tied, as some of land offered by the commercial agriculture sector was unsuitable for resettlement.

On Monday the authorities launched a Land Tribunal to “determine the purchase price in instances were there is a dispute between the owner of commercial agricultural land and the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, once that land has been offered for sale to the government,” the ministry said in a statement.

Researchers have suggested that many beneficiaries were unable to sustain themselves on their allocated land, which has led to calls on government to provide more long-term support to new small-scale farmers.

Just 15 farms, a total of 6,483 hectares, were acquired for resettlement in 2001/02. Figures for 2003/04 are not yet available, but in late 2003 the government had acquired just 124 farms, totaling more than 700,000 hectares, since land reform began in 1995. Well below the target of 9.5 million hectares in five years.

Pressure has mounted for more radical measures, with newspaper headlines drawing comparisons to Zimbabwe’s controversial fast-track program. In recent months Namibia’s farmworkers’ union threatened to invade commercial farms in what they dubbed “land-sharing and not land grabbing”. The union said the move was prompted by the eviction of farmworkers from farms across the country.

In a statement condemning the planned land invasions, the Lands and Resettlement Minister, Hifikepunye Pohamba, acknowledged that the “pace of acquiring land meant for resettling formerly disadvantaged landless Namibians is not moving fast”.

He said this was because “some farmland offered to the government [was] totally unsuitable for resettlement purposes. Some of these farms offered are very stony and desert-like areas. Therefore, the ministry cannot buy these unproductive farms and put people on them”.

Pohamba noted that land was a sensitive issue in Namibia and the entire southern African region, and had to be handled “with the utmost care”. Upon launching the Land Tribunal, he said the land question in Namibia was both crucial and complicated, “in that it is the most important and primary means of production, because every development activity takes place on land”.

His ministry was about to complete a database of all beneficiaries resettled over the years, their dependents and livestock.

QUESTIONING LAND REFORM

In its “Vision 2030” statement, the ministry said the annual average resettlement rate was 2,222 people, and it was hoping to resettle between 68,000 and 70,000 by 2030. An amount of N $50 million (US $6.5 million) has been set aside over the next five years for the purchase of farms.

It admitted that the “acquisition of land and the subsequent process of land distribution and access, through resettlement and rehabilitation programs, have so far proved to be a hard nut to crack. Its complexity stems from various inherent factors, such as land availability in relation to the skyrocketing demand for it”.

Namibia is very dry, making much of the land suitable principally for pasture and leaving farmers who receive relatively small holdings from the land reform unable to earn a living.

The ministry is now questioning whether the current mode of land reform is the best one for the country. In an overview of its work, the ministry asked: “Does resettlement and rehabilitation (as part of land reform) contribute positively to the overall goals for national development, and if so, how much?”

Analysts have pointed to a lack of post-resettlement support as a major stumbling block to successful implementation of land reform policyA report by Namibia’s Legal Assistance Center (LAC), ‘One Day We Will Be Equal … A socio-legal perspective on Namibian Land Reform and Resettlement Process’, said “the only reason that rampant starvation and malnutrition do not ravage the resettlement projects is because the government operates a food-for-work program in virtually every resettlement project”.

“Beneficiaries of resettlement projects are caught in a vicious [cycle] because of their poverty: they have to sell agricultural produce to obtain some cash, which in turn lands them in a food deficit situation.”

It added that “one of the main criticisms against the resettlement program has been that it does not provide sufficient training on how to effectively utilize land obtained from the government, nor does it provide access to modern farm equipment”.

LAC researcher Willem Odendaal, who co-authored the report, told IRIN that “there’s a definite lack of capacity building programs”. There was “a lack of transferring skills, basic technical skills and basic managerial skills to the beneficiaries on these projects”.

“Another problem is that people are not close to markets. Also, if they are lucky to produce some produce for the markets, they don’t have the means, the organisational or managerial skills, to organize themselves,” he explained.

“It’s very difficult for people to have access to credit to make improvements on the piece of land they are allocated, as there’s definite insecurity in terms of the transfer of ownership of title deeds,” Odendaal said. Many beneficiaries of land reform were unable to secure loans because they had a long-term lease agreement with the state, and not title to the land.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A TITLE DEED

The ministry has argued that “long-term lease agreements with the incumbent beneficiaries … give new impetus to the resettlement program in general, and will raise revenue to secure the long-term sustainability of the program”.

“Lease agreements will encourage beneficiaries to increase the productivity of their respective plots and add value to the resettlement program,” the ministry said.

However, the research conducted by LAC indicated that “lending institutions, inherently conservative in nature, are not likely to lend money based on collateral of uncertain legal title, although (in theory) a loan might be given on a properly registered 99-year lease which had some marketable value”.

But there “is no substitute for clear and unambiguous legal rights to land [which was] absolutely necessary for [new] settlers to compete in a modern agricultural economy”, the report added.

“If your property is not registered, then it has complications – in the sense that you cannot get a loan to improve your land, you cannot put land up as surety to improve the land and buy basic equipment,” Odendaal said.

“Thus, the reality of life in the resettlement projects is of settlers being dumped on a few hectares of poor land, equipped with hoes and shovels, and expected to earn a living. This is a process certain to fail – a viable resettlement program requires an infrastructure to support settlers while they gain access to the kind of substantial agricultural enterprises that can support a reasonable lifestyle,” the report concluded.

With all this in mind, many resettled beneficiaries have opted to lease their plots, mostly to communal farmers from overgrazed areas, for as much as N $200 (US $30) a month. Some, said Odendaal, had opted to abandon their plots for a chance at a better life in urban areas.

TIME FOR A RE-THINK

A newly created Permanent Technical Team (PTT) on Land Reform will undertake a survey of 40 percent of the 124 farms acquired by government that are earmarked for resettlement, to “establish the socioeconomic profiles of the resettled people or beneficiaries”, and review the existing policy and legal framework dealing with land reform and natural resources management.

The PTT hopes to develop “a comprehensive Land Reform Plan of Action”. Pohamba has said this “Action Plan would then map out the future direction of land reform in Namibia”.
Germany, the country’s former colonial power, announced last year that US $7.8 million of a recent development aid package of US $25.66 million would go towards the country’s land reform program and to finance the PTT.

The LAC study argued that “the land reform and resettlement process must be carefully evaluated as a poverty-amelioration measure”.

“Simply put, the future of small-scale agriculture in Namibia, as well as in the rest of rural Southern Africa, may be economically very limited. Therefore, resettling 100,000 or more Namibians on small-scale agricultural schemes may never be an effective way to reduce rural poverty,” the report concluded.

The country is currently in the grip of a food security crisis, with some 650,000 people in a population of around 1.8 million said to need food aid this year.

A combination of ongoing drought and flash floods has severely eroded the coping ability of rural dwellers and subsistence farmers.

According to Odendaal, “in Namibia there’s a history of how commercial farmers were supported with subsidies in the old apartheid days … and in the dry season their subsidies just increased”.

“It’s very difficult to farm in Namibia, and I think government has been under-estimating climate conditions in this country,” he noted. “People need to be able to sustain themselves, and [more than] 10 years into the resettlement program, they have not been able to do so.”

IRIN is a United Nations humanitarian information unit. This article may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All materials in this article copyright by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004.

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(January 27, 2004) A pregnant woman must visit a maternity facility for medical check-ups at least three times in her nine months of pregnancy, and one or two times after delivery. Not so for the woman in the congested displaced people’s camp in northern Uganda with few health centres nearby.

“We have to walk ten kilometers from here to Gulu Hospital for antenatal check-ups, it is tiresome and you do not want to experience it for the second time,” says Catherine Achiro, 31, a mother of five from Awer camp.

When they go into labor, most women first go to traditional birth attendants (TBAs) before thinking of going to the hospital labor wards.

At Unyama camp there is only one Grade II health center that serves 16,000 people. About six miles outside Gulu town, there is a Grade II health center but no maternity ward.

“These facilities are temporary,” says Ngeca Esau Ojwang, who is in charge of the emergency unit.

Although the health center distributes free birth control pills and condoms, and offers anti-STI treatment, it does not handle deliveries.

“The TBAs help most of the women to deliver their babies,” says Ojwang, adding that there are 28 TBAs in the whole of Paicho sub-county where Unyama camp falls.

Most of the women interviewed prefer giving birth in their “makeshift” grass-thatched huts.

“Even if you went to the health centers, you would neither get drugs nor health workers to attend to you during labor,” reasons Grace Lanyero, 26, a mother of five, all born at home.

“During pregnancy we walk over six miles to Gulu Hospital for maternity check-ups…but when it comes to deliveries, I am always assisted at home by a neighbor,” she adds.

Unfortunately, some mothers die of complications during or after labor. In all the health centers, there is no equipment and personnel in case of caesarian deliveries.

“The only camp where we will soon be able to perform caesarian deliveries is Anaka in Nwoya county,” says Dr. Paul Onek, the district director of health services. Operating theatres are also being put up in other health centers like Kilak and Omoro counties.

But for the moment, any patient requiring surgery has to be transported several miles across risky village roads to Lacor or Gulu hospital by bicycle, motorcycle or by car.

“We have an ambulance but sometimes the army says the road is not secure and it is not surprising that we lose many mothers,” says Onek.

“Because of insecurity, there are few health workers,” he adds.

For example, in the camp at Pabbo that serves 60,000 people, there is only one midwife for an average of 3,120 deliveries each year.

“Generally, there is an acute shortage of midwives,” admits Onek. “The health workers carry out only 15% of the deliveries. Some women deliver on their own, while the majority are delivered by TBAs.”

The elderly TBAs are medically trained and experienced, but often lack equipment such as gloves.

The maternal mortality rate in Gulu is one of the highest in Uganda at 700 out of 100,000 deliveries. This is higher than the national ratio of 506:100,000.

“The health of the mother as she gets pregnant and carries the pregnancy is usually very poor,” says Onek.

The infant mortality rate is 172:1000 compared to the national infant mortality rate of 88 out of 1,000 live births.

After a woman has delivered, she is often dehydrated and weak and another dilemma sets in: That of how to look after the baby, especially feeding it as it grows. Nutritious food is not readily available because of the Kony war.

Due to poor feeding most infants are susceptible to diseases like yellow fever, malaria, diarrhea, cough, scabies and intestinal worms, making them stunted, emaciated and weak.

“We do not have food to feed the children,” laments 48-year old Sabina Ajok. Her neighbor, Margaret Ato, 34, has a three-month old daughter but because she is dehydrated, the milk from her flat breasts is not enough for her child.

“I am now feeding the baby on millet porridge,” says the mother of eight, herself malnourished.

“My child falls sick every now and then. Since she was three weeks, she has been having diarrhea,” says Santa Anek, also from Unyama, as she shows me Barbara Acora, her thin two-year old daughter.

Jennifer Adong says Francis Okello, her two-year-old son has a similar disease. “His stomach is swollen and he suffers from recurring diarrhea which makes him cry. Last year he was admitted to Lacor Hospital, for a week but the disease has persisted.”

According to medical officials, a number of the babies die because of poor feeding, and insufficient milk from their mother’s breasts, while others die due to the lack of medical care.

“We are having all these problems because of the insecurity,” says Dr. Onek.

“Unless peace is restored to northern Uganda, things might get worse for mothers and their children.”

KAUDA, Sudan — His journey took him from Nairobi’s throbbing urban streets to Sudan’s shrubby plains. He carried only what he needed: his faded memory of his mother’s face, a few pairs of jeans and two hip-hop cassette tapes.