By Nangayi Guyson -nangayi.guyson@alleastafrica.com
Kampala,Uganda –The refugee situation in Uganda is becoming critical and it needs urgent response, so Uganda together with the UN’s refugee Agency are hosting the Solidarity Summit on Refugees, with the aim of securing $2 billion funds per year for the next four years to manage the warfare of the refugees.
Uganda is to host a solidarity summit on refugees with a main goal of strengthening refugee support and protection.
This summit will take place between 22nd and 23rd June in Kampala and is a follow-up to the one in New York that took place in September 2016.
Uganda which is praised worldwide for it’s welcoming polices toward refugees is hosting more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers, with about 920,000 of them from South Sudan, making it one of the world’s largest hosting countries .
Uganda’s prime minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, said . “ the situation is critical and really need international assistance so that we can have the ability to cater for the full water, sanitation, health and educational needs of the refugees and their host communities,” said Rugunda.
Uganda with its struggling economy, has been receiving an average of about 2,000 refugees per day for the last six months.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said this year that it needed about $7 million monthly to provide a full ration to all the refugees until the end of the year and also $ 20 million to restore the whole food supply this year in Ugandan camps.
The World Food Programme puts the monthly food requirement for the refugees to at least $12m (Shs42b).
The UN agency for refugees in Kampala, in a recent statement, indicated that last year they received only 40 percent of the $251m (Shs889b) requested for humanitarian assistance and this year they will need about $558m (Shs2t).
The ‘refugee solidarity’ conference was discussed during the meeting between President Museveni and the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, at the sidelines of 28th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This high level solidarity conference that is expected to attract 500 dignitaries from key international organizations in an attempt to drum up support and mobilize resources for thousands of refugees the country is hosting.
Copyright © 2016 Alleastafrica.com All rights reserved. The information contained in Alleastafrica.com may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the prior written authority of Alleastafrica.com
