Agnes Bulaba, a Congolese refugee in Uganda, has been surviving for months without the food rations she used to rely on. Her kids scrounge around the neighborhood for whatever food they can find.
“As a woman who’s not married, life is hard,” Bulaba told The Associated Press. The mother of six, who frequently works as a prostitute to support her family, said that some residents “keep throwing stones at us, but we just want to feed our kids and buy them some clothes,”
According to the United Nations refugee agency, Uganda is the largest refugee-hosting nation in Africa, with over 1.7 million refugees living there. Although Uganda is known for accepting people escaping violence in neighboring countries, officials and humanitarians say the country’s high refugee population and declining foreign aid have placed a lot of strain on host communities.
The U.N. estimates that 10,000 new people arrive in Uganda every month. The majority are from nearby South Sudan and Congo, but some have recently fled the war in Sudan.
In the southwestern Ugandan refugee settlement of Rwamwanja, Bulaba is one of tens of thousands. Small plots of land are provided to the refugees there to cultivate as they gradually wean themselves off of complete reliance on humanitarian food rations, just like in other settlements throughout the east African nation.
The value of a U.N. food program is only $350 million.
Since 2021, the U.N. World Food Program has given priority to the most vulnerable groups for food assistance, which can be as little as $3 in cash or food items, as funding has steadily decreased. Refugees are entitled to 60% rations after three months in Uganda, and after six months, the amount is cut in half. The vast majority of the approximately 99,000 refugees in Bulaba’s settlement are at risk of hunger and other forms of poverty because only recent arrivals receive 100 percen food assistance.
At a 2017 summit in the capital city of Kampala, the Ugandan government and the United Nations requested $8 billion to address the sudden surge in South Sudanese refugees. There was only a $350 million pledge.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, traveled to Uganda last week, in part to draw attention to the lack of funding. Grandi said in a statement at the conclusion of his visit that the international community “should not take Uganda’s generosity and the global public good it provides for granted “Services here are overstretched. Natural resources are limited, and financial support is not keeping pace with the needs.”
He also said international support “is urgently needed to sustain Uganda’s commitment to refugees,” urging donors and humanitarian partners to “come together with the government to address the needs of refugees and the generous communities hosting them.”
In Uganda, refugees can use the same hospitals as locals, and their kids can go to school. Although this facilitates their assimilation into Ugandan society, tensions can occasionally arise from competition for scarce resources. Violence is rarely reported, though.
During Grandi’s visit, Hillary Onek, the Ugandan government minister responsible for refugees, stated that assistance is required for local officials to assist refugees in becoming more self-sufficient. Despite claiming that the nation was “overloaded” with refugees, he listed a number of training programs, such as metal welding, carpentry, and bricklaying, that could assist refugees in becoming self-sufficient.
He declared, “We are attempting to be innovative.” “There is not enough money to meet their demands, not even providing them with enough food to eat, given that funding for refugee programs has decreased over the years.”
“To survive on your own, using your skills, using whatever capacity you have” is the alternative, according to Onek.
However, Bulaba, a Congolese refugee who flees violence in her home country with her two children and has been in Uganda since 2014, claimed she is unable to find employment. Since then, she has given birth to four more kids, all of whom frequently go barefoot and without proper attire. She misses the stipend she used to receive in exchange for food.
“For us to eat, we look for work, but there’s no work,” she said.