Government proposes audit of refugee donor funds for transparency
The Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Hillary Onek has said that the government is overwhelmed by the growing number of refugees.
He said that the country intends to meet other East African member states affected by the burden to find a solution to the crisis.
This comes after the new arrival of 35,000 refugees in the last couple of months, who include 25,000 from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 10,000 new entrants from South Sudan, adding to the already existing 1.6 million refugees in Uganda.
"Villages which are near the refugees, some of them have already started losing their food, losing their chicken and their cassava are being uprooted at night and so on, those are now starting to happen. We need to have dialogue with those countries," he said during a news conference.
Onek said Uganda continues to be Africa's largest refugee hosting country with over million refugees from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)/ Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi and other countries listed among host countries who equally need support as they shoulder the hosting burden.
“The government commends the government of Japan for the tireless effort and continuous support to Uganda. It is our hope that Japan will remain a partner to the government of Uganda in addressing humanitarian challenges,” he said.
When asked to whom these humanitarian agencies are accountable, Onek said that the government has no idea how the money they collect has been utilised.
He proposed an audit of humanitarian agencies on how they spent some of the $ 530 million that was pledged during the refugee solidarity summit that was held in Uganda in 2017.
"They give these monies to the Word Food Programme, UNHCR and to other agencies. They choose to get these agencies because they think Uganda is very corrupt and here you are asking to whom they are accountable. It means there is bigger corruption there. We even proposed that let’s start auditing the agencies ourselves here,” he said.
Speaking on behalf of the UN system in Uganda, Antonio Queridot, Country Representative of FAO applauded the government and people of Japan for the valuable contribution to the global efforts in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic as well as to the advancement of human security in Uganda.
Japan in March this year, committed to give approximately US$ 3-3 million to support refugees and host communities protect refugee women from sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) with a strong focus on mitigating the Covid-19 impacts, over a period of one year from April 2022 to March 2023.
