Uganda: Invest in water not war
Karamoja is a remote rural area in north-eastern Uganda, devastated by war and other armed conflicts, poverty and desertification due to global warming. That’s where the Kaabong Women’s Group Organisation (KGWO) fights droughts and famine, and co-ordinates Strike activities. The women have built a Centre brick by brick with the help of men supporters, brings together thousands of women each year. Some walk three days without food to take part in the Strike.
KGWO has involved local women’s groups, which had not worked together before. These joint actions have won the abolition of “cost sharing” health care charges, and have increased men’s respect for women’s work both at home and outside.
In 2004 over 5000 people
attended the Strike rally on International Women’s Day. Women spoke out
against warfare: “It’s all our suffering. Many people have died, or been
raped and abducted; thousands are internally displaced without essentials.
No war! No guns!”
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Accessible clean water is the priority as women and girls have to walk miles to dig for dirty water in dry river beds, and many die, are raped or get ill from it. KGWO has introduced bio-sand filters to the local community – a straightforward local appropriate technology which uses local sand to make unsafe water clean and bacteria free. Grace Loumo, founder of KGWO in 1989, said: “We have been demanding water for years. Our greatest success is that on 8 March officials announced the local government will construct 16 boreholes in our District. One of our demands has been met!” But action has been slow. International support may be needed to make sure the boreholes are built. |
In 2005, other demands were added: “Food security for all. Health care, housing, transport, literacy… Affirmative action. Women united against domestic violence. Invest in Caring Not Killing.”
There was another, unpublicized, famine in 2005. For years KGWO has challenged the World Food Programme to give priority to pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, pre-school children and others seen as ‘workless’ and ‘unproductive’. “Children, the disabled, the elderly and others who cannot struggle to get food are pushed away by strong warriors, and miss out on 2 kilos of beans and posho. And because of bad roads other parts are left to suffer without food.”
KGWO has been reclaiming scrubland to grow a fruit orchard; providing legal rights and adult literacy classes to ensure women’s right to land; training in birth attendance skills; and giving protection to AIDS orphans.