Trouble ahead as food crisis pits locals against refugees

One by one, Ms Victoria Duite’s two children let cows out of a kraal tightly built from ripped bamboo strips and elephant grass knotted into fencing. 

The animals wander through a crowded neighbourhood at Palorinya Refugee Settlement in Obongi District.

For four years now, Ms Duite, also the settlement’s welfare Council Two chairperson, has lived at this facility located in Palorinya Sub-county, Obongi Dstrict, with her children. They fled the insurgency in their native South Sudan in 2017. With each passing day, Ms Duite, 33, worries about the future of her children.

“I imagine how they will be studying, feeding, and growing in this kind of environment where everything is scarce,” she says.
Ms Duite—whose husband remained in South Sudan—has been struggling to keep her head above the water since the World Food Programme (WFP) reduced food rations two years ago.

“I am a leader here and everyone, especially women, run to me thinking I have everything; yet I am also just like them,” she tells Sunday Monitor, adding: “Now that the situation has escalated, many family heads are sneaking back to South Sudan to look for money or food with which they return to support their families.”

Ms Duite reveals that in 2020 alone, their registry update conducted between December and March indicated that nearly 10,000 people were absent, while hundreds of families had remained with only children since their parents returned to South Sudan to seek survival alternatives.

Food insecurity has birthed another problem of abandoned children. Child-headed families are now a permanent fixture in the refugee community.

To make ends meet, some refugees at the settlement have turned to charcoal and wood fuel businesses. Mr Richard Araku has done it since 2019.

“There are a lot of stones everywhere. To get a place where someone can dig is very difficult because we are also neighbouring River Nile and its criminal, according to local authorities, to dig the shores of the river. They say it’s a wetland,” he said.

Before the food ration was reduced, Mr Araku says they would sell part of the donation to raise money. With that option out of the picture, he has turned to selling charcoal and firewood at Ndirindiri market.

Sunday Monitor has established that in the neighbouring villages of Paloringa West and Morobi, Okuni East, getting a piece of land to hire for farming is a tough job. The land cover patched between the hills and the River Nile—favoured as it is for farming—is too limited to accommodate both the host and refugee populations.

Mr Terrence Acake, another refugee residing in Palorinya Refugee Settlement, now deals in fish after several attempts to hire land to do farming came to a dead end.
“I rented land three times and I was chased away from it,” Mr Acake said, adding: “Remember, getting the Shs50,000 [for hiring land] is a big problem.”

Authorities react
While the refugees use porous borders such as Lefori and Metu in Moyo District to slip into and out of South Sudan, authorities say this vice has resulted in repeated incidents of criminality since some refugees return with weapons.

“They go through without being checked. Several times we have found some of them with guns, [which] they use for robbing people,” Mr Alphonse Adiki, the Morobi Village chairperson, says.

Last August, gunmen reportedly robbed several people around Ndirindiri Trading Centre. The shenanigans only reduced when police established a station there.

Local leaders in Palorinya Sub-county told Sunday Monitor that the place is already feeling the pinch of the refugee activities. 
Mr Thomas Morudrale, the sub-county chief, said the refugees have not endeared themselves to many by failing to “support reforestation” even though they bank on forests to source charcoal.

“We are committed to sensitisation, we cannot go and start arresting them because we also sympathise with them since they are refugees but we tax them heavily to discourage them,” Mr Morudrale said.

While the host community population in the sub-county only stands at 18,417, South Sudan refugee numbers in the sub-county currently stand at 55,714. This translates into a nationals-refugees ratio of 1:3. Since the refugees outnumber their hosts three times, reports of fights and disagreements over land for cultivation are not rare.

Intervention
Meanwhile, the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) is already engaging the refugees in several settlements across Obongi and Adjumani districts (Madi Sub-region) to engage in money-making ventures to help them provide for their families.

Under the Uganda Host Community and Refugees Empowerment project, Mr Raymond Mukisa, the project manager, says at least 10,000 refugees have benefitted from the cash-for-work engagement in the districts.

“We provide them with livelihood opportunities through cash-for-work where beneficiaries are engaged to improve the infrastructure,” he says, adding: “They do tree growing and also participate in the conservation of the environment through tree growing.”

Leaders in the Madi region still predict that the situation will worsen further once the World Food Programme swaps food distribution with cash.

“Going back home any time soon is not an option for these refugees. They should look properly into starting a new life here, meaning they should plant trees and grow food consistently instead of waiting for handouts,” Mr Ben Anyama, the Adjumani District chairperson, opines.