When war leaves more than 800 children stranded

“When we heard gunshots, we just ran out of our house with both parents and my four brothers and sisters. Our parents told us to take cover in the bushes and told us to keep quiet but later things became worse and they told us to shift from the hideout.

As we were running, we lost each other and I found myself alone. I could not go back to look for my parents and brothers,” Mahabu recalls the ordeal.

Alone and frightened, Mahabu says, “I was pushed by other people to run, who told me that my relatives will find me later and I didn’t know where they were taking me. I found myself alone in the camp in Uganda and I don’t know if my relatives are alive or not.”

Extent of the crisis
Mahabu is one of more than 800 Congolese children now living in the refugee camps in Bundibugyo District, who found their way into Uganda as they fled the insecurity in DR Congo.

It started when, according to Lt Ninsiima Rwemijuma, the Army spokesperson for the Rwenzori region, the Allied Democratic Force (ADF) rebels in conjunction with the Mai-Mai rebels fought Congolese government forces at Kamango Town Council in eastern DR Congo, about 15km away from the DRC-Uganda border.

Harriet Ntabazi, the Bundibugyo Woman MP, says out of the more than 30,000 refugees living in camps at Butogo, Kasili, Busunga, Bubandi, Busulo, Buhula and Bundingoma, more than 800 children do not know where their parents are and that as leaders, they have tried to trace them in other camps but have failed. “We do not know whether their parents are still alive in their hideouts of Congo or in Uganda,” she said.

Some kind parents in Bundibugyo are currently helping some of the children with food and accommodation while, “some of the children are sleeping under the trees, compound and verandahs and it rains on them. Some of them are suffering from fever, and without medical care,” Ntabazi expounds on the condition of these children.

Expectant mothers in the camps
The fight did not affect only children but men and women too. One of these women is Mariam Asad. “When the rebels attacked our home town, we were still asleep, we only heard gun shots, then shortly I heard knocks and kicks on our neighbour’s door, I dashed through the window and ran away, living behind my husband and child,” she says. Luckily enough, Asad had slept in a night dress and her neighbours helped her with some dresses as they all fled.
“I could not bother about my child at that time because I am pregnant and sometimes the rebels are kind to children,” she explains.

According to Ntabazi, Asad is one of the 2,000 women who fled to Uganda while pregnant, “But 12 of the pregnant women have so far given birth in the last few days, we used our ambulances to take them to the health units and they delivered successfully,” she adds.

How it is affecting the area
The district chairman, Jolly Tibemanya, says of the refugee situation: “Camps are overwhelmed and our school toilets are full, these people are exposed to human waste, especially the young children who are not attended to and there might be an outbreak of cholera any time.” He adds that as a result of the large number of refugees, more than seven schools have closed because they were turned into refugee camps.

District leaders have asked the Red Cross, UNHCR and Office of the Prime Minister to relocate the refugees. Most of them use River Ndugutu as their main water source and as such there is a threat of poor sanitation and hygiene.
“Some of the refugees bathe in the river while others get drinking water from it, which is not safe,” Ntabazi opines, cementing Tibemanya’s fears of a cholera outbreak.