The committee's report revealed that 465.52 hectares of land were acquired for the Karuma hydropower project, displacing 3,735 people, including 280 landowners and 134 tenants. The project has affected both Karuma Town Council and Awoo Village.
Emmanuel Turyagenda, the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement Commandant however told Uganda Radio Network in an interview that the recent verification exercise shows the population had dropped to 65,722 refugees.
Moureen Wagubi, the Executive Director of the Institute for Social Transformation (IST), a women’s right organization says food insecurity and poverty remains key challenges refugee women are facing that ends up resulting in GBV.
The annual food security and nutrition survey conducted between March and April this year reveals that only 58.2 per cent of mothers in host communities exclusively breastfeed their children while 41.8 per cent don’t.
Rhoda Akec, another refugee says most food prices within Kiryandongo Refugee settlement have doubled or tripled recently leaving most vulnerable members unable to afford them.
Some of the refugees say since 2013 and 2016 when they arrived at the settlement, the land allocated to them has been gradually reduced, leaving them with no space for farming.
The Kiryandongo Resident District Commissioner Paul Peter Debele who chaired the meeting asked the occupants to vacate the area by 12th July 2021, this Monday.
Charles Omiya, a resident of Karuma Town Council told URN on Sunday that Opota abandoned his teaching job 7 years ago for unknown reasons and to fishing for livelihood.
On Saturday URN visited and traversed the area but discovered less than 50 people at Okweche Trading Centre where the incident occurred while the entire parts of the area looked abandoned with all houses under lock, grasses eating up the compounds and no footprints visible anywhere. Many domestic animals and poultry were seen roaming the area unattended to.
Patrick Jimmy Okema, the Aswa River Region Police Spokesperson told URN on Saturday that police has entered a case of aiding aggravated defilement against the couple.
Originally established in 1990, Kiryandongo Settlement was re-opened in 2014 during the South Sudanese insurgency and now hosts almost close to 60,000 refugees, majority of whom are from South Sudan. The rest are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan.
