Many Karimojong children are getting emaciated as a result of lack of enough food.
Kampala, Uganda | Several families in Napak district in the Karamoja sub-region have fled their homes into the Teso region to search for casual jobs. This follows the current food shortage which is hitting the region.
Joseph Lomonyang the Napak LC V chairperson says that over 2,000 people mainly from six sub-counties of Matany, Lopei, Lokopo, Lorengechora, Iriiri and Apeitolim have crossed to the neighbouring Teso districts of Amuria, Katakwi, Kapelebyong and Soroti looking for food.
According to Lomonyang, the number of people to flee the district is most likely to go higher given the current hunger situation.
“Last year, very many people planted crops but all the crops got destroyed by floods making our people vulnerable,” he said.
Elijah Lobucel, the Lokopo sub-county chairperson said everyday mothers and their children walk while those who can afford the costs pay for transport to Teso.
“What we are advising them is not to go to Kampala streets, but if its going to Teso for work to get food it is not bad since the Itesot are brothers and sisters under Ateker cluster,” he said.
Jimmy Tebenyang, the district councillor for Ngoleriet sub-county in Napak district said many children were getting emaciated as a result of lack of enough food.
“There are families where you find children yawning from morning to evening without eating anything and that is why we are calling the government to come to the rescue of people,” he said.
Robert Okitoi, the LC V chairperson Amuria confirmed the presence of Karamoja families in the district and urged the Itesot families to treat the Karimojong as their brothers and sisters.
He also appealed to other district leaders in the Teso region to receive the people of Karamoja with a good heart and share the little they have.
“This is the situation that requires to share, I call upon the people of Amuria and Teso at large that not all the Karimojong are bad people, those who are bad disturbing to raid people of Teso are few and so we should not victimise every one because the law will deal with those raiding but let’s support the Karimojong families,” he said.
Patience Nabukalu, who has experienced climate-related flooding, joins protestors from around the world to deliver a letter to CEO Georges Elhedery criticising the financing of oil, gas and coal projects.
At nine years old, Patience Nabukalu was devastated when her friend, Kevin, died in severe flooding that hit their Kampala suburb, Nateete, a former wetland. Witnessing deaths and the destruction of homes and livelihoods in floods made worse by extreme rainfall has had a profound impact on her.
She decided to try to bring about change – to do what she could to amplify the voices of those in the Ugandan communities worst affected by the climate crisis.
Now 27, Nabukalu is one of several young climate activists who travelled to London this week to attend what has been predicted to be the last in-person AGM held by HSBC. They will deliver a letter to the bank’s CEO, Georges Elhedery, urging him to stop financing the expansion of oil, gas and coal projects and harmful industrial agribusiness, and to stop providing money to companies that forcibly remove people from their homes to make way for such infrastructure.
“This is an opportunity to talk to real people, not just an HSBC office,” said Nabukalu, speaking before the meeting at the Intercontinental hotel. “I will be so happy to get the chance to hand over the letter and to ask: ‘Has HSBC measured the damage they have done by financing corporations that are driving the climate crisis?’”
Nabukalu in London ahead of the protest. Photograph: Jess Midwinter/Action Aid
The letter refers to a 2023 Action Aid report, which identifies HSBC as “the largest European financier of fossil fuels in the global south”, channelling $63.5bn (£48bn) into fossil fuel activities between 2016 and 2022.
The letter to Elhedery, from young people all over the world, refers to HSBC’s plans, announced earlier this year, to review its commitment to scaling back its financing of fossil fuels.
“This has made something very clear: you value profit margins and boardroom agendas more than the lives of millions of people bearing the full brunt of your decisions,” the letter reads.
Environmentalists criticised HSBC after it delayed key parts of its climate goals by 20 years, and watered down environmental targets in a new long-term bonus plan for Elhedery that could be worth up to 600% of his salary. In February, the lender said it was reviewing its net zero emissions policies and targets – which are split between its own operations and those of the companies it finances – after realising its clients and suppliers had “seen more challenges” in cutting their carbon footprint than expected.
The activists’ letter asks “that you not only stand by your commitments to end your support for the fossil fuel industry in line with what the science requires, but also put an end to all lending and underwriting for corporations involved in fossil fuel expansion”.
Nabukalu will also urge the bank to stop funding corporations that are backing the east African crude oil pipeline from Uganda to Tanzania. Once constructed, the pipeline would produce an estimated 379m tonnes of CO2 over 25 years. The main backers of the multimillion-dollar pipeline are the French oil company TotalEnergies and the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Nabukalu, who has visited people living along the proposed route, said: “This pipeline is already causing damage even before its construction. Thousands and thousands of people have been displaced. They were promised land titles, but have none. Their livelihoods have been sabotaged. They cannot build agriculture, the water table is low, so they have little access to water.
“These people should be at the centre of the bank’s decisions.”
“We will talk to HSBC and ask them to stop financing fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis,” said Nabukalu. “By continuing to finance TotalEnergies they are destroying our future.”
A report published in April found that those displaced along the pipeline’s proposed route had reported being inadequately compensated and rehoused.
Some western banks have declined to fund it after pressure from a coalition of organisations and community groups.
A spokesperson for HSBC said: “We follow a clear set of sustainability risk policies which support our ambition to align the financed emissions in our portfolio to net zero by 2050. We do not comment on client relationships.”
In January, a joint team of soldiers and police evicted more than 400 local people who had been occupying part of the 64 square kilometre Maruzi ranch in Apac District. The most affected were actually residents of Acam-cabu Village.
Acam-cabu Village is no longer a recognised administrative unit in northern Uganda’s Apac District after it was erased from the map of Uganda following a land dispute.
Since this area is now excluded from the list of existing villages in the country, a total of 1,040 people living in 180 households there cannot now benefit from any government programmes and projects.
Mr Bosco Wacha, the LCI chairman of Acam-cabu, said the village disappeared from the map of Uganda around 2018.
“Since 2018, I have not been getting my salary and the people who have been isolated because of this confusion are suffering,” Mr Wacha said on the phone on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
He also said all the households in the lost village are at risk of extreme hunger and starvation because the government has stopped them from engaging in any farming or economic activities.
“There is a severe shortage of food here because we have been stopped from farming. We are not able now to take our children to school and we lack access to healthcare,” said Mr Joe Olwock, the area chairman of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
Mr Felix Odongo Ococ, Akokoro LC3 chairman, said that although the government doesn’t recognise Acam-cabu as a village in Uganda, during the National Population and Housing Census, 2024, enumerators went and counted people there.
Data obtained from the local leadership of this isolated administrative unit shows that there are 180 households in Acam-cabu. Of these, at least 14 households have one member each and eight households have eight members.
However, a household regarded as number eight in the document that was reportedly sent to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) has the highest membership, standing at 11 people. This household is followed by number 158, which has 10 members, and household number eight has a total of nine members.
Dr Kenneth Omona, the Minister of Northern Uganda, previously said he would meet the leadership of Apac to try to iron out all issues affecting the community in the district.
In January, a joint team of soldiers and police evicted more than 400 local people who had been occupying part of the 64 square kilometre Maruzi ranch in Apac District. The most affected were actually residents of Acam-cabu Village.
The squatters, numbering over 1,500 occupied the said land around 1995. They had repeatedly ignored various eviction notices, saying the land belongs to their fore grandfathers.
In September 2015, the High Court in Lira issued an interim order blocking Apac District leadership from evicting the affected residents. The district then resorted to using the army and police to evict the squatters.
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has established a military detachment to man security of the area.
EU: Palm oil lobbyists allegedly are trying to “undo” deforestation law, incl. granting “smallholder” exemptions, raising concerns for Indonesian rainforests
“Palm oil lobbyists water down Europe’s anti-deforestation law”
The European Union made waves when it passed the landmark EUDR “zero deforestation” law in 2023. Unfortunately, multinationals are already trying to undo it.
The new law is an attempt to keep deforestation-linked products out of Europe, but palm oil lobbyists are fighting back, saying its monitoring and tracing requirements could financially harm small farmers.
In part due to these concerns, the EU is giving all importers until 2026 to get up to speed on compliance. But now, lobbyists are pushing the EU to grant smallholders exemptions from the EUDR—a potential death knell for some of Indonesia’s last standing rainforests.
The term “smallholder” is very ambiguous in Indonesia. Some smallholders run impoverished family farms. Others are local elites who abuse their influence to create mini corporate plantations in protected areas, a growing problem for the orangutan capital of the world.
Those elites are a major source of deforestation in Indonesia, but lobbyists want to have the EU pre-label entire geographic regions as being at “minimal risk” for smallholder deforestation, essentially giving them a pass on EUDR requirements.
…the EU … shouldn’t create major loopholes for small, rogue operators. Instead, it should help smallholders reach full compliance…
