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Uganda, DR Congo to meet over lake clashes
Water transport. Travellers sail on Lake Albert shortly before landing in Hoima District in 2016. Police have launched a safety campaign aimed at minimising accidents on Lake Albert
KAMPALA- Officials of Uganda and DR Congo are tomorrow expected to hold a second round of talks at the border town of Ishasha on implementation of a joint cross border fisheries on lakes Albert and George.
Diplomatic sources told Daily Monitor yesterday that the meeting follows a similar one last Thursday at Kasenyi in Kasese District in an attempt to find a solution to repeated clashes by troops of both countries on the lakes at the border between the two countries.
A joint communiqué of last week’s meetings indicates that the joint patrols will specifically “test and validate standard operating procedures” for enforcement between the two countries, reduce illegal fishing gears and methods, reduce capture of immature fish, and assess the extent of illegalities in the two water bodies.
The procedure for their operations will be agreed upon by a technical team from both countries, and bankrolled by Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Programme, the investment arm of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). NBI is the cooperation body for the 10 countries sharing River Nile.
The two countries “agreed to hold joint operations that will occur at the same time, with the main objective of strengthening national capacities to eliminate illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.”
The joint patrols, the communiqué detailed, will be conducted on the lake to protect the breeding areas—covering the breeding areas and the deep waters from the landing sites.
In Uganda, the operations will stretch from the Lake Albert island of Mulango in Ntoroko District northwards to Kikuube District while on the eastern DR Congo side, the area of operation will stretch from the disputed Rukwanzi Island.
For the DR Congo, the communiqué notes that the patrol exercise will be extended to the markets, including the control points along the exit roads.
Both countries, the communiqué indicated, further agreed that illegal fishers or in possession of an illegality in each other’s territory waters shall be handled in accordance with the standard operating procedures to be finalised.
Tensions over the lakes between Uganda and DR Congo have flared for years over extent of the boundary and troops from both sides have routinely clashed on the lakes, sometimes resulting in fatalities.
