April 30th, 2010 by paul
"The hunger that is coming will be very bad"
- Resident of Obo, Central African Republic
In 2004, United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland called northern Uganda the world's worst neglected humanitarian disaster. LRA attacks and the government's draconian policy of forced displacement, along with a strong dose of international neglect, led to the deaths of over 1,000 northern Ugandans a week at the height of the conflict. Egelands's comments helped move the international spotlight to the crisis, and since then the LRA has left the region and an influx of international aid has helped over one million people return to their homes.
Unfortunately, the fragile peace in northern Uganda has not prevented the LRA from crossing new borders and creating humanitarian disasters in other remote, forgotten corners of Africa. In the last two years the LRA has waged a systematic campaign of terror that has displaced over 300,000 people across three countries in central Africa, many of whom remain beyond the reach of any humanitarian assistance.
Nowhere is such assistance more jarringly absent than in the southeastern corner of Central African Republic (CAR), where LRA attacks have displaced tens of thousands of people in the past two years. Last month I had a chance to visit Mboki, a small town there that hosts thousands of these displaced persons, as well as several thousand refugees fleeing LRA attacks in the DR Congo. During Sudan's civil war, which officially ended in 2005, the UN refugee agency provided humanitarian assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees that sought safety in Mboki. But the humanitarian aid dried up after the Sudanese refugees returned home, and humanitarian agencies have yet to return despite the needs created by LRA violence in the area.
While in Mboki I talked with Pabeyo, a husband and father who lives with his family in the nearby village of Mabusu. After describing an LRA attack on the village in which his 12-year-old son was abducted, I asked him why he and his family don't move to Mboki, where a contingent of Ugandan soldiers provides a deterrent to LRA attacks. His answer was simple: "The threat of LRA attacks is higher in Mabusu, but for sure we will die of hunger in Mboki."
Across southeastern Central African Republic the lack of humanitarian assistance is forcing people to put themselves at the mercy of brutal LRA rebels in order to provide for their families. Like Pabeyo, many people have to decide whether to stay at rural farms where they have access to food but are more vulnerable to LRA attacks, or to move to towns where there is relative safety but few ways to feed a hungry family. In the nearby town of Obo one woman described how several men were killed recently after venturing into the bush to cut thatch for house roofs, a risky task that may have been made unnecessary had durable plastic tarps been made available by humanitarian agencies.
Providing humanitarian aid to LRA-affected communities, however pressing the needs, is no easy undertaking. The lack of international presence there (no UN staff and only a handful of international aid workers in a region the size of Pennsylvania) means that it's difficult to even know what aid is needed where. UN agencies and NGOs also face myriad logistical challenges in actually delivering assistance, ranging from an extremely poor road network to international donors that have consistently underfunded humanitarian projects in CAR in recent years.
In such a remote and lawless region, aid can also sometimes do more harm than good. In the past year, LRA rebels have attacked humanitarian assistance distribution sites in neighboring DR Congo and South Sudan, turning potentially life-saving assistance into a bulls-eye focused on the people it is intended to benefit.
This nightmare scenario nearly played out before my eyes last month in the CAR towns of Zemio and Mboki. During my visit, a UN convoy of humanitarian assistance was traveling to both of these towns to distribute desperately needed aid. While a Ugandan military base provided some security in Mboki, there were no security forces stationed in Zemio. When I asked one official what steps were being taken to ensure the assistance did not turn civilians into targets of the LRA, he told me, "we are crossing our fingers and hoping they don't attack."
Within a week of the distributions, LRA activity was reported in both towns, neither of which had been attacked by the LRA since July of 2009. A rebel group attacked Mboki, killing at least one person and abducting several children. A small LRA party also reportedly tried to enter Zemio but was repelled by armed civilians.
If the logistical difficulties and perilous dangers to humanitarian assistance in southeastern CAR are not addressed, the hunger that is coming will only get worse. In the town of Djemah, on the northern outskirts of the populated area in this region, local officials told us that the people are still too afraid of LRA attacks to try cultivate in their fields. But even if they did feel secure enough to leave the town, many have eaten their planting seeds to stave off hunger in the previous months. As the UN has yet to conduct an assessment of the humanitarian needs there, much less actually provide lifesaving assistance, the prospects for international support to the people of Djemah look equally discouraging.
In 2004, the outspokenness of one brave world leader helped to break the status quo of international neglect toward the crisis in northern Uganda. Who will be the Jan Egeland for communities in southeastern Central African Republic?