I am Father Karim KONSEIMBO, a member of a Catholic religious institute called the Society of Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), founded in Algeria in 1868 by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie. The Society of Missionaries of Africa was officially registered in Uganda on April 1st, 1987. Here we are part of the pastoral agents of the Diocese of Arua Uganda. For our mission with the refugees here we have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) of Uganda through the Catholic Bishop of Arua Diocese. With two confrères, I work as a Missionary of Africa in four refugee settlements (Agojo, Maaji 1, Maaji 2 and Maaji 3) in Arua Catholic Diocese in Adjumani District. I’m the priest in charge of Pastoral and spiritual care in those four refugee settlements, that count around 55.000 refugees. Next to those four settlements where I permanently work, my two confrères and I also work in four other settlements in the same district of Adjumani. Our mission is to empower the refugees and host the most vulnerable communities. We don’t discriminate on the basis of religion, sex, tribe, or nationality, but we focus on the persons most in need. Our areas of service are pastoral and spiritual care, psychosocial support, promotion of peace and peaceful co-existence, research, and livelihood empowerment, through education, skills training, and innovation (SDG1-SDG8). With limited resources, we empower the refugees and we help the Catholic refugees with masses, catechism, retreats, and recollections. Below, the focus is only on the situation in Adjumani District where I have spent almost 3 years with the refugees.
Uganda is one of the largest refugee-hosting nations in the world. As of February 28th 2022 Uganda hosts 1,529,904 refugees (UNHCR data). Can you tell us about this situation?
Adjumani is one of the main refugee-hosting districts in Uganda because it is a small town very near to the South Sudan border. Adjumani District has nineteen refugee settlements with a population of more than 237,787 people, about 15.5% of the total refugee population in Uganda, mostly coming from South Sudan. The population number of the nationals of the district is only around 235 000, sometimes causing conflicts around resources-sharing. With the ongoing conflict in South Sudan and the recent conflict in Sudan, Adjumani District is still receiving registered and non-registered refugees, while many NGOs and even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are pulling out slowly. It is expected that by January 2024 there may be no food support for refugees anymore, while the refugees do not have received and own enough land for cultivation.
The refugees of the settlements mostly were poor villagers in South Sudan who fled from the war. They have experienced the killing of their family members in their villages. Also, as the war in South Sudan is inter-ethnic, it also affects the different ethnic groups living in the settlements, and can cause a semblance of peace between the different ethnic groups in the settlements. All of these conditions creates a spirit of hopelessness, hatred, and distrust in the settlements. That is why the refugees need to be listened to and to be encouraged. They also need to be trained in nonviolent communication, solidarity, and love- and peace-building. In search of a solution to this, me and my confrères and also the Missionary Sisters of our Lady of Africa work in the areas of psychosocial support and of the promotion of peace.
There are many challenges that refugees have to face in their everyday life. Among them, there are critical gaps in education. What is the situation and what can be done to guide inclusive education efforts?
The big challenges are a lack of school fees, lack of skills training, and big critical gaps in the education itself. Regarding the first challenge, as parents lack money to feed their families and pay the school fees, around 80% of young people don’t go to secondary school. Particularly refugees cannot afford secondary education. Next to that, in Maaji there is only one secondary school and it can’t accommodate all the students. There are no sufficient training schools near the refugee settlements. The refugees I work with can’t get school fees to finish secondary school and thus can’t go to university. There is only one girl I know who is doing training in nursing in Gulu, after finishing the 4th year of secondary school, but our community is helping her to pay the school fees of her formation. She will finish the training very soon.
Talking about education. Refugee women and girls often have fewer opportunities to access education and it remains an aspiration, not a reality. What is the situation in the Uganda settlements? Are there any specific education programmes for refugee women and girls?
Women and girls make up around 80% of the population in our settlements and are the most vulnerable. Because of poverty, many parents can’t take good care of their children. Because of poverty and also sometimes because of a more traditional mentality, many girls are left aside in education matters. The consequences of this are early and/or forced marriages, and early and/or undesirable pregnancies. There are some skills training programs initiated by some NGOs, like tailoring and hairdressing. Still, in our needs assessment survey, we discovered major challenges to these programs: good skills training schools are far away from the settlements; after training, the women are not given start-up support, while refugees can’t afford the start-up kits themselves; and some skills can’t be put into practice in the settlements as there is a lack of clients.
We are already helping to pay refugee students’ secondary school fees, but our funds are limited. To be more effective and more productive, I and my two brothers as Missionaries of Africa have set up a special program for women on home gardening in the settlements. In this program, they learn how to use their small lands to produce vegetables to eat and to sell. In Maaji 2, we already skilled five women. Also, to reduce the distance between the settlements and the training schools, we have a project of building a skills training center between the 4 settlements. While we already have the land (50 Acres), we are lacking resources to build it. Besides that, the best way of helping the girls is to send them to good boarding schools. We have seven girls boarding in Kampala, but we are lacking funds to buy start-up kits for them.
You are in charge of Pastoral and spiritual care of the refugees in 4 refugee settlements. What are the challenges of serving in these settlements?
Besides the critical challenges of limited funds there are many more to face. Firstly, we face challenges in the Pastoral and spiritual care: there is a lack of ongoing Christian formation, a lack of formed catechists, a lack of structured catechism, and a language barrier. On top of that, six of our ten chapels are under trees, having no walls or roof. Therefore, during the rainy seasons it is difficult to celebrate mass there. Secondly, due to the shortage of food, it is a challenging to have meetings with people, as often they are busy looking for food. Thirdly, there are challenges regarding psychosocial support: as many refugees are mentally and psychologically disturbed, working with them needs a high degree of patience and understandings. We also face challenges in promoting peace and peaceful co-existence due to the tense atmosphere between the different ethnic groups in the settlements. As this inter-ethnic hatred is very rooted in the communities, there is a need for perseverance from those who are working on creating peaceful co-existence. Regarding education, many young refugees here stop going to school after primary school. The girls are then forced by poverty to marry early or to sell themselves to earn money for school fees. Many boys turn to alcohol and make physical use of the poorest girls, leading to unwanted pregnancies. There are many livelihood challenges: there is a lack of cultivable land, a shortage of food, a shortage of clothes and poor health care. This has destructive effects. For example, widows sometimes sell themselves for money or food in order to be able to take care of their children. Lastly, the hardship of life pushes the few men in the settlements to go back to South Sudan to find resources or work to provide for their family. When they are in South Sudan, many are killed, leaving behind widows and orphans in the settlements in Uganda.
Some concluding thoughts
Working with refugees is a very important contemporary mission of the church, but working with refugees needs self-knowledge, self-care, anger management, humility, flexibility, availability, patience, endurance, perseverance, capacity of listening, capacity of loving them as created in the image and likeness of God and the capacity of knowing your limitedness and your insufficiency. The 1st big challenge for all the refugees: the humanitarian support is not enough and not reliable, there is lack of land for cultivation, shortage of food, lack of school fees, lack of skills of the youth; and all that are caused by their refugeehood and their extreme poverty. With this situation, it is therefore important to work on livelihood empowerment, through education and skills training. These skills training will give them the qualifications to increase their chance of employment or create jobs for themselves. The 2 nd big challenge: the lack of ongoing Christian formation, the lack of formed catechists, the lack of structured catechism, the lack of built chapels and the language barrier. However, as our resources are very limited, we are still looking for partners for projects for the service of the refugees.
Fr. Karim KONSEIMBO, a missionary of Africa, is serving in Northern Uganda in the refugee settlements in Adjumani District. He was born in 1987 in Burkina Faso, from a Muslim family. He was baptized as a Christian in 2006 and he joined the missionary of Africa in 2009. He studied Philosophy in Burkina Faso, did the Noviciat in Tanzania, did his stage in Burundi, studied 1st cycle theology in Côte d’Ivoire, and Missiology at the Lyon Catholic University in France. Now, he is the priest in charge of Pastoral and spiritual care in four refugee settlements in Adjumani District, where he works permanently with refugees.