The Ugan­dan gov­ern­ment held a cri­sis meet­ing to respond to 35 deaths due to star­va­tion in north­ern Uganda. A food short­age in north­ern Uganda has been attrib­uted to many fac­tors, from armed con­flict to floods and more.

From All Africa Hal­ima Abdal­lah reports on the emerg­ing famine.

Food stocks in the north and the east have for long been threat­ened by inse­cu­rity — which made mil­lions of peo­ple to be con­fined to camps for the inter­nally dis­placed for about two decades as a result of Lord’s Resis­tance Army rebels and Kara­ma­jong raiders.

But, of late, mer­chants from South­ern Sudan have been buy­ing vir­tu­ally every­thing, from live­stock to crops in the field, offer­ing irre­sistible prices.

MPs, how­ever, cite nat­ural fac­tors such as inter­mit­tent floods which cause lower pro­duc­tion of food.

In the east, for instance, floods in late 2007 destroyed many crops.

The floods were said to be a result of cli­mate change due to envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. Sub­se­quently, the area was hit by pro­longed drought.

“We are appeal­ing to all Ugan­dans who have some­thing to offer, the Food and Agri­cul­tural Organ­i­sa­tion and the World Food Pro­gramme, to come to the res­cue of our peo­ple,” said Eli­jah Okupa, an MP at the cri­sis meeting.