KIREKA, 1 May 2008 (IRIN) - Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village.

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.

Meeting Point International, an NGO that started by providing home-based care to HIV-positive people in the northern town of Kitgum, estimates there are about 1,000 Acholi households - the ethnic group worst affected by the conflict - in the Kireka area.

There are no official estimates of the rate of HIV infection among this group, but every Thursday hundreds of HIV-positive Acholi women gather at the Kireka Meeting Point Centre for educational and income-generating activities, as well as singing and dancing. Meeting Point provides transport and money that enables about 300 people to get antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) at local hospitals and clinics.

Alanyo and her husband both receive support from Meeting Point to access ARVs, although their two HIV-positive children are only taking Septrin, an antibiotic. Alanyo's husband is one of the few men in Kireka who was willing to be tested for HIV and is open about his status.

"Most of the men [in the area] have died or are sick, but don't want to go and test," said Teddy Bongomin, a Meeting Point social worker based in Kireka. "The men go for work, but then to drink, and it's the women who die innocently."

Donations from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) used to allow Meeting Point to provide food to the community, but the rising price of grain worldwide has caused the agency to tighten its belt, and no one in Kireka now receives this kind of assistance.

"Quarries are the bank of the village: when you're broke you go there," said Bongomin. But Alanyo cannot cash in as often these days, and she is becoming more worried about being able to provide for her children. "If my children are in school, I will die being happy and knowing they are safe in the world," she said.

On their own

Moses Chrispus Okello, head of research and advocacy at the RLP, said the high rates of alcoholism and drug use among urban IDPs often led to domestic violence and marital rape, fuelling the spread of HIV. "Urban IDPs have a higher rate of vulnerability than other slum dwellers," he commented.

David Ecweru, minister for disaster relief, emergencies and refugees, acknowledged that the urban poor faced major challenges in relation to HIV/AIDS, but told IRIN/PlusNews that there were no specific government programmes for urban IDPs. "We expect them to benefit from other government programmes for the urban poor," he said.

In Okello's view, the government's failure to come up with a plan and budget for this group amounted to "abdicating its responsibility".

Little hope for return home

As the prolonged conflict in the north comes to a gradual end, many in the IDP camps have returned to their village homes. Okullo, of the Urban IDP Committee, said many Acholis living in Kampala would also like to return home, but lacked the funds to re-establish their lives in the north.

The RLP has recommended that the government include urban IDPs in its resettlement programmes, but as yet there is no specific policy for assisting them. According to Ecweru, the government is providing transport and basic amenities to urban IDPs who wish to return to the north on an unofficial basis.

Alanyo only returns to her home village to attend the funerals of relatives. Even with improved security in the region, it would be difficult for her to return there permanently because few clinics provide the ARVs she needs to maintain her health.

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