UGANDA: Hard labour for HIV-positive IDPs

KIREKA, 1 May 2008 (PlusNews) - She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city's outskirts, collecting and breaking rocks into chips at a local quarry. For every 20-litre jerry can she fills, she earns 100 Ugandan shillings (US$0.06). On a good day, when she is feeling strong and can take the sun beating down on her back as she chips away at the rocks, she takes home about 1,000 Ugandan shillings (US$0.60).

Lately there have been fewer good days. Alanyo is HIV-positive, and sometimes she can barely manage to cook for the nine children in her care, four of whom are orphans left behind by family members who died of AIDS-related illnesses.

Kireka is one of several urban slums with a high concentration of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from northern Uganda. According to the Refugee Law Project (RLP), a refugee advocacy group in the law faculty of Uganda's Makerere University, between 300,000 and 600,000 war-affected northerners have migrated to urban areas in search of a livelihood and a safe place to live.

"Those with relatives left for Kampala, and those without relatives stayed in the [IDP] camps," said James Okullo, chairman of the newly formed Urban IDP Committee.

People who fled their homes but stayed in northern Uganda are considered IDPs and receive aid from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the government, but those in Kampala have not received similar levels of assistance because until recently they lacked a collective identity. In Kampala they slipped through the humanitarian cracks, blending in with other slum dwellers despite their often higher levels of vulnerability.

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