UN agency provides Uganda with food for displaced in north

The World Food Program (WFP), theUN food aid organization, has provided Uganda with food to help resettle about 260,000 people displaced by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) attacks in the north, a WFP official has said.

"People are moving back to their villages, or to camps nearer to their homes. The rations are meant to provide food until their first harvest season and to encourage more people to return to their villages to resume normal lives," WFP representative in Uganda Ken Noah Davies was quoted by local press on Wednesday.

Davies said that the UN agency has distributed 2,720 tons of cereal, vegetable oil and beans to Katakwi and Soroti districts.

For the case of Kaberamaido district, Davies said the UN agency,with the help of the Uganda Red Cross, would first establish exactly how many internally displaced persons (IDPs) were there before providing them with food.

But he estimated that about 97,000 people in Kaberamaido would receive 1,700 tons of food to return to their villages.

He, however, said the WFP hoped to phase out relief food distribution in the region by 2005 if the security situation remained stable.

Davies said even after the IDPs are resettled, the WFP plans tostay on in the region to feed schools.

He said that it would also continue to feed malnourished children, pregnant and breast feeding mothers and children abducted by the LRA but later escaped or were released.

He added that under this arrangement, the WFP would also work with districts and sub-county bosses in the region to rehabilitateroads, small dams and other infrastructure destroyed during the insurgency.

Over 1.6 million people have been displaced in northern Uganda during the 18-year rebellion by the LRA rebels.

Source: Xinhua