Women and children begging on the streets of the Ugandan capital of Kampala are being returned to their troubled home region of Karamoja in the northeast under a government initiative to resettle the pastoralists back home.

Aid and human rights workers however say that with cattle raiding, gun violence and food insecurity still major problems in Karamoja, plans need to be properly agreed to ensure that the returnees find enough to keep them from migrating again. The region is Uganda's least developed.

Concerns have particularly been raised about human rights abuses during an ongoing disarmament process. On Thursday, the United Nations team in Uganda, in a statement, said earlier commitments by the Ugandan government to prevent violence in Karamoja had "not been systematically upheld or implemented".

Sitting with her children in the shade of a tree at Kobulin transit camp, 30-year-old Angeka Lucia recalls the hardships that drove her from the region a year ago.

"We had no land and we were just living on charcoal burning," says the mother of three. "My parents had 10 cows but they were raided and so there was nothing left. We would eat rats but after a while even the rats went away. So we went to Kampala, what else could we do?"

Cattle raiding, an age-old feature of life in Karamoja, has escalated with the introduction of the gun. With wealth invested in cattle, a fortune can be lost overnight.

The subsequent insecurity together with increasingly frequent drought cycles has prevented many from making the transition to crop growing, necessary for supporting the exploding population and more settled, modern lifestyle.

The result is that 90 percent of the population is partially dependent on food aid from international agencies. At the same time, social and economic indicators for Karamoja are consistently the worst in Uganda, from primary school attendance to the human development index.

It was for these reasons that the promise of food and work in the big city was so appealing.

In the city

When the Karamojong reached Kampala many found its riches were out of reach.

Angeka remembers that when she arrived off the bus with her husband they spent their first night sleeping on the verandah of a local bar. "We knew no one and so we went begging on the streets," she says. "We would be mocked [and] could not even pick from the rubbish that others left behind because we’d be chased away."

Nacap Santina, 20, remembers that "they used to call us ‘Mukoro mojo’ – their abusive term for us Karamojong - and that was torture to me. It was like segregation in our own capital city".

They are familiar stories to Rita Nkemba whose NGO, Dwelling Places, worked with Karamojong who were picked from the streets and taken to the Kampiringisa Centre 40 km from the city. "They are treated in the most inhuman way in Kampala, discriminated against at every turn," she said.

Nkemba agrees with the government’s policy of encouraging Karamojong to return home but, like many external agencies, has concerns over the government’s handling of the return of 670 Karamojong, mainly women and children, in February.

"It was too swift and too pushed," she says. "People were not properly registered and often children were disorientated, dealing with people who could not speak their language."

The UN Children's fund, UNICEF, has expressed concern that the government rode roughshod over the right to freedom of movement by removing Karamojong from Kampala’s streets, and then failed to ensure that families were kept together or re-united before being sent to back home. "Some actions were committed in clear violation of Uganda’s international and national human rights obligations," the agency said.

Back in Karamoja, at the Kobulin transit camp, the returnees insist that they were offered a choice and that they were only too happy to go home.

"They said ‘how do you see your life?’" remembers Angeka. "Do you want to go back or stay here on the streets? That wasn’t a difficult decision for me."

Lavinia Lommi who works with returnees for Co-operation and Development, an Italian NGO, says the government approach is changing for the better. "People used to say that they were beaten up and just dumped at Kobulin, but this time they say they were asked where ‘would you like to go'," she said.

Agencies are nonetheless concerned that the government failed to plan for the return and instead relied on international donors to carry the burden.

"The food from the Office of the Prime Minister arrived six weeks after the first group had arrived," says Lommi. "If the NGOs had not been here then they would have done what returnees had done in previous years – go back to Kampala."

The question now is how to make that return sustainable beyond the next bus out of town. That needs to be answered not only by helping to reintegrate those who have returned but also by addressing the needs of the wider population who also feel the pressure to migrate.

"I chose to come back and I am happy about that, but now I want some land to be able to cultivate food to live on," says Angeka. "I just want to be able to feed my children and make enough to send them to school."

She may soon have her wish granted. UNICEF is sending returned children to school, and whilst some returnees have gone to their home villages, those for whom that is not possible are waiting for a land wrangle to be sorted out near Kobulin allowing them to build a new resettlement village.

Next to the transit centre a village is being built by previous returnees. They have been given basic household essentials, seeds, land, and are being supported to get involved in income-generating schemes.

David Lorika of the Italian agency, SVI, which is supporting returns says: "We are teaching people agriculture here so that they have a secure food source, so that when they get back to Kampala they do not go back to raiding."

Problems remain

Addressing the specific concerns of returnees is just part of the problem. For every young woman who fled to Kampala there are 100 who did not and who suffer the same hunger and lack of access to education and healthcare.

According to observers, catering for the needs of returnees could exacerbate the problem of migration with people seeing it as a way to access aid packages. The latest inter-agency report suggests that may be the reason behind some movement of Karamojong to Kampala from other towns in March.

As a result, the donors and agencies would like to see the government take more responsibility for helping returnees re-adjust. UNICEF’s Jeremy England noted: "The government initiated the process by which people were encouraged to return so they need to make sure now that it does not become a cyclical operation."

Uganda's Minister of State for Karamoja, Aston Kajara, said his department was helping co-ordinate an ‘inter-agency response’, but added: "This is not one day’s work, but we have started and slowly things will improve."

Casting a shadow over all efforts to reintegrate returnees and discourage others from leaving is the ongoing campaign to end instability. For the government and army that means a strong military response to ban arms.

Others, including the UN and international NGOs, believe that is contributing to a cycle of violence and exacerbating the problem.

Plastering the walls of her new house at the returnee village is a tired Aleper Martha, 48, who points to a shift in attitude which could provide better opportunities for future generations: "After all I’ve been through, my only hope is my children going to school. I very much appreciate them being given that chance."