Summary: CHF 111,629 was allocated from the IFRC’s Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) deliver immediate assistance to some 3,480 beneficiaries.

Sunday 24th June 2012, a landslide caused by heavy rains buried the villages of Namanga and Bunakasala in Bududa district. The landslide covered approximately 5 acres of land and left a devastating effect on the people and the environment in the area. 18 people were killed, 15 houses were completely buried in the mudslide, and crops and property were destroyed.

President Yoweri Museveni has said there is urgent need to rehabilitate the north and northeastern Uganda and empower elders as a way of addressing the social dislocation in the region following years of conflict, adding that his government had a grand plan to re-launch the restocking exercise in the region.

The President was also happy to learn that following the mass treatment campaign he launched against river blindness in March at Angura Health Centre in Pader district, there have been no reports of new cases of the nodding disease registered by the Ministry of Health.

More people are displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) right now than at any time over the past three years, and tens of thousands more people have fled to neighboring countries. Oxfam’s Policy Advisor in DRC, Samuel Dixon, explains the current crisis and what the international community can do to help ease the suffering:

How serious is the crisis at the moment?

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

• The humanitarian situation throughout eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has deteriorated in recent months due to increased armed group activity. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) countrywide currently exceeds 2 million, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The DRC has not experienced such a high level of displacement since 2009.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Crisis levels of food insecurity to persist in eastern Horn due to below-average rains

• UN scales up response to food insecurity and malnutrition crisis in Burundi

• WFP reports critical food situation in rural Djibouti

• Registration exercise ongoing in Dadaab refugee camp

• Food security worsens in southern Somalia

• Tanzania begins closure of Mtabila refugee camp hosting some 32,000 Burundians

• Resource-based conflicts simmer in Tanzania’s Rufiji Valley

Democratic Republic of the Congo: humanitarian situation deteriorates in the Kivus

Violence is continuing in the Kivus, where it is spreading to the most remote and difficult-to-reach areas, with tragic consequences. The ICRC is concerned about the rising number of civilian victims. It is calling on all parties to the conflict to spare the civilian population.

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Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the lunch hosted by the American Society of International Law (ASIL), in Washington, D.C., 7 May:

How UK aid is helping thousands of young people - many of them former child soldiers

“It takes skill to do” explains David Ojok, as he levels the mortar on a windowsill. “I couldn’t have done this job without training”.

David, 18 years old, is a bricklayer in Gulu, Northern Uganda. He is one of thousands of young people who, in the last two years have been given a brighter future through vocational training – in skills such as building, catering, electrical engineering and farming.