Northern Uganda: Work gives dignity

New project seeks to activate the people being reliant on food relief and minimise the passive dependency on handouts

By Mai Rasmussen, Information Officer

Maize, sorghum, beans, peas, oil. tons and litres of it. The task of distributing food to the internally displaced people, IDPs in northern Uganda is enormous. And it’s not necessarily the most reasonable way of feeding the needy. Therefore, a new project aiming at dignifying the beneficiaries by letting them work for their living is underway. To the core of the situation is what’s called the ‘dependency syndrome’.

“That’s having a population that just sits and waits for handouts. People not having objectives for how they wish to live their lives. If you surrender your life to waiting for the convoy to bring you food, then you are probably not living very well,” says Opio Joseph, Project Officer for food security and livelihood with Norwegian Refugee Council, NRC who distributes the food on behalf of the World Food Programme, WFP. An example of the dependency and passivity is the trouble NRC meets in engaging IDP camp residents in unloading the relief trucks.

NRC investigates two different ways of enabling the people to influence their own livelihoods more directly. One is alternative farming methods, the other is finding ways of producing items for sale. Rearing of cattle, pigs, poultry, or rabbits could create an opportunity for the IDPs to raise the household incomes and at the same time provide them with important proteins. Production, marketing, and sale of local crafts could be another way for especially the women to make money.

The alternative farming methods currently under investigation include growing crops for the families’ own consumption in polythene sacks. This could be done inside the camps, hence beating the factor of the farm land being insecure. One reason for the new programme is to minimize the dependency syndrome among the IDPs. Another is the fact that WFP only distributes what corresponds to 78% of each person’s daily need for food. The IDPs are supposed to farm the remaining 22%, but in most cases they can’t because the land is inaccessible due to the insurgency. The UPDF allows people to dig along the main roads and in a perimeter of two kilometres around each camp. According to the NRC other organisations have had little success in putting the camp residents to task by distributing seeds. Lots of seeds lie idle in people’s houses, supposedly due to people’s fear of leaving the camps. And because the traditional farming methods demand for more land than the IDPs can reach within the limits set up by the army. The NRC strategy is to use the little land accessible efficiently, and at the same time put local capacities to use.
“We think that working for a living would bring about another kind of moral,” says Opio Joseph.