This report was written by my team of interviewers after completing the survey. Its presentation on 24 September 1983 was at the invitation of the Sudanese general project manager, Mr Alexander Najib. Different members of the team drafted sections on the topics for which they had greater responsibility, and Charles Male was selected as their representative to read it out to the meeting. He 'practised' his presentation several times before the others. I was not present at the meeting, but I was told that the expatriates and Sudanese officials did take the recommended tour of Kala.

Our report is based on a study of the West Bank settlement, transits and field study of three areas among spontaneously settled refugees. A total of 3,814 interviews were conducted among them and 10 per cent sample of families among the assisted refugees were interviewed. Specialized studies were made on protection, markets and education. Basically, we were a team of six and I am here to represent them. This report has been written by several of us.

Since this is a meeting of agencies and time is limited, we have confined ourselves to pointing out problems which can be remedied by those responsible and to making suggestions which we believe are practicable. Some people may not like our report because we point out failure and weaknesses, but we believe that unless we are honest, no improvements can be made. We Ugandans see our society declining in every way and our research team is alarmed about our future as a community.

Many things have gone wrong with the idea that relief aid should be distributed equally. Equally often means per family head, but not per capita, and all families are not the same size. Some items are distributed once only and those who arrive late never receive them. Although Sjoerd [the UNHCR programme officer, Yei] tells us that everyone should now have a blanket, we found, for one example, a tent of 13 people with only one.

There are many reasons why this inequality exists. The repeated crises caused by WFP (World Food Programme) necessitates selling of items. Relief items are often the only assets owned by refugees and we found disciplinary committees illegally fining wrongdoers and confiscating (and selling) these goods to pay fines. There are not enough hoes in some families for all of those capable of cultivating land. Distribution is not carried out on the basis of need. There are very many who cannot ever feed themselves and they receive no extra attention.

We found committees and block leaders paying themselves in food and although UNHCR has been clear about the illegality of this practice, the keeping of rations for 'funerals' and for 'visitors' is too common. Whenever we were offered food for our team by a 'generous' committee, we knew something was wrong. The unwillingness of the Ugandan community to care for its weakest members but to demand so-called equal treatment, finds the plot of a severely crippled man in Morsak at least 3 km from the centre: he is forced to cross a shaky log bridge on crutches.

The sub-nutritional standard of present rations provided by WFP together with their haphazard distribution has forced tens of thousands of refugees to daily leja leja (piecework). We believe that the crisis over this past two months has set 'self-reliance' back at least one year, but still WFP continues to implement its schedule of reducing food supplies further, preventing refugees from working for themselves. We believe that UNHCR and the government should make serious protests against WFP policy. I do not have to mention the many recent cases of civil disorder. The coincidence of food shortages, the handover to the PM [project management], and the attempts to convince refugees to repatriate have increased insecurity. There are far too many accusations that the Sudan government is responsible. We of the team know better, and we tried to educate our brothers, but it is highly unfair to our host government to bear the brunt of the blame and the hostile reactions of the refugees. The new settlement officers suffer many handicaps and this present crisis has only added to their burdens.

The most serious problem here is that of leadership. No one is seen to have the final authority in the settlement and this is, to a great extent, caused by the agency competition which the settlers have been too quick to adopt. Someone said that money is the root of all evil, but whether that is true or not, it is certainly power. The [Sudan] government is always the weakest partner because everyone knows where the money comes from. If the SO [settlement officer] or chairman corrects the social worker, he is told his boss is SCC [Sudan Council of Churches]. Similarly, with health staff and all other employed refugees. We have witnessed a dramatic decline in professional standards among those trained in Uganda to do their job, and among the unskilled who have suddenly been employed, there is little incentive to do their work properly. Agencies simply accept reports without checking.

SOs are mostly untrained and inexperienced and lack of confidence to face their task. Some of them are so insecure as to have become defensive and the 'open' files, 'open' stores, 'open' government policies laid down are not being followed in many settlements. This breeds insecurity and tension, and leads to even more authoritarian leadership. Some SOs were even afraid to have settlers participate in our drawing and essay contest - presumably they thought the aim was to allow refugees to criticize them, when the real aim was to get refugees to look at themselves. Every day more letters of accusation and defence circulate through the offices of the PM (project manager) and agencies.

Elections are not democratically organized in many places and in Mondikilo the secretary told us that they did not need elections, although in our interviews we learned of much discontent. Settlement meetings - where the community could be drawn closer together - are too rarely held and people remain uninformed about policy and programmes. We of the team blame our brothers because under the foreman system (which so many resented being changed) we had a chance to do something better than was done. Systems of communication in the settlements - at the best - stop with block leaders who utterly fail in most cases to transmit information. For example, Sjoerd's rat control letter was not disseminated, but in most cases, like our publicity about the Lutaya school project, remained locked in the SO's or chairman's file until we came to undertake interviews. Short courses should be organized immediately and literature made available to SOs and committee members to help them develop the skills they need for their job. Agencies should include SOs and chairman in their different meetings to familiarize them with programmes and encourage refugees to respect them.

There is hardly any point in mentioning health problems. We know only too well what the answer is. However, while we were in Kala, a child fractured its right arm. There was nothing available to set it properly so this child will carry evidence of neglect of health throughout its life. Doctors are said to come unannounced and only deliver drugs. Rarely, we are told, do they see patients.

We invite you to make a little tour of Kala. In B1.2/16 there were, a few weeks ago, twins [born] whose mother did not have enough milk. There was none in the dispensary. There are eight TB cases here and insufficient drugs. One man in B1./l - responsible for two living skeletons among his many dependents - is coughing blood. Our Ugandan health workers everywhere are loath to refer patients for a variety of reasons, but one woman here in Kala delivered prematurely in January, and one can of milk was supplied - despite the promise of more. Her infant has survived but she continues to bleed: sometimes so much she is faint. Yet she has not yet been examined by a doctor or referred. There is a woman at Mondikolo whose foetal movement stopped eight months ago. She looks hugely pregnant and her skin is blotchy showing she is ill. She has not been seen [by a doctor]. In block 13 you may visit Justin Anyanzo who arrived healthy, but today he is crawling on one leg. Whatever disease attacked him has never been diagnosed. In B33/7 lives a blind woman, her old mother and a sister and four small children, one at the breast. They receive no regular extra ration other than the occasional help from SCC. While you are walking around you could also stop at B15/4; 13/12; 23/12; 9/18; 16/23 and 20; 6/15; 21/23; 23/18; 25/24 and 27/6. These tragic cases were found with only a 10 per cent sample.[1]

Death rates in settlements are shocking, but the reality is never recorded because of failure to report to the office of GMT [German Medical Team]. In Roronyo 190 people have died but the records show only 92 [deaths]. We found graves in plots were common.

Supplies of medicine for leprosy cases ran out in Mogiri and we found four cases never served at Kunsuk. While at Mondikolo, waiting for transport, we had reports from Mandari hospital each day for four days. A Sudanese woman was in labour - [only] the baby's hand was out all that time. We were told we should take her to Yei when the transport came. Perhaps you can understand why refugees get furious when they hear the usual excuse for poor medical facilities: 'this is Sudan'.

No one seems to have defined the term community development. We think this money was intended by the donors to help the weakest, but it is presently being mainly used to help the able-bodied. Women are systematically excluded except for small amounts of money for what appears to be leisure time activities rather than income generation. The profits on a table-cloth are £S1.000.

There is apparently no feeling that there should be accountability for CD [community development] expenditures to the community as a whole, either by the agency responsible or the CD worker and his committee in the settlement. Father Victor has pointed out to us that when people say 'Geneva is our boss' that is wrong. He says 'Refugees are our boss, as we are spending their money', but we found no CD worker who even knew the budget for his settlement in order for him to constructively plan for the community.

There is not enough money to undertake projects which would really raise incomes, and then refugees are being GIVEN what there is, not loaned it, which is what we thought was supposed to happen last year. Hence there is no opportunity to instil discipline which a loan would involve. People are told the obvious: if fewer people are involved the profits will be greater, and co-operatives are finding ways of crossing names off their lists. In Mopoko and elsewhere, women must attend a meeting three times a week or their names are removed. In Limuru, the consumer's shop association holds 'secret' meetings and those not included in the small group are not informed that they have missed a meeting until afterwards. Co-operatives don't work here in Kala either. Only three tailors are benefiting from the two machines and when we were there, the members all confessed that they had been cheating the society for 10 months. This was never reported to SCC by the social worker. The SCC machine in Tore - given for men and women - is used by two men exclusively. The requirement to build before getting equipment sounds OK but the problems of getting materials, the inability of women to build, the long delay in supplies of capital, discourage people.

Once again, CD is the scene of agency conflict. Women under GMT can't join the development clubs under ACROSS in some settlements. We found no evidence that women have yet profited from the nutritional clubs and wonder why there needs to be a separate advisor for women - given the shortage of agricultural staff. In one settlement the agricultural advisor refused to allocate land to the women as their club was under GMT. Bicycles can't be loaned to colleagues because one is ACROSS and another is GMT and so on. Things were much better when UNHCR followed the 'sectoral' approach and we recommend its being re-instituted. If helping everyone equally is sincerely the aim, it would be better to spend more on women and handicapped and the truly vulnerable groups. Here in Kala there are 270 women-headed families. Most can never be self- sufficient through agriculture. UNHCR, however, estimates that only 10 per cent of the population is vulnerable.

CD projects are supposed to include Sudanese, yet we found in Yei the government also has a similar programme. According to its head no effort has ever been made to co-ordinate refugee/Sudanese CD with Sudanese CD. He complained that GMT's women groups among his Sudanese women competed with his own programme and like in our settlements, women under different 'umbrellas' were quarrelling. He also noted that his staff in the field had no transport while agency staff in settlements were all provided with bicycles. More serious for his programme has been the loss of staff to the better paid positions in the agency programmes which are temporary. 'Why,' he asked, 'couldn't the Sudan government, agencies and UNHCR just sit down and plan together to use scarce resources?'.

Reports on schools in self-settled areas and integrated schools as well as those in settlements will soon be available. We have observed self-help and integrated schools are maintaining a superior standard of teaching and there is better discipline among both staff and pupils, compared with settlement schools. The teachers in these schools outside settlements who receive meagre pay or none at all are more conscious of their responsibility to society and in my (i.e. my colleagues') view, although most of them are not trained, they are more dedicated. A lot still needs to be done in settlement schools. The headteachers and staff are faced with the task of adjusting themselves and pupils to the challenges of a new society. Maintenance of discipline, proper administration, and professional ethics is a major issue to be handled in settlement schools. Most of us are aware of the need to improve performance from these schools and we recommend the following:

1. Monthly meetings for head-teachers to discuss problems and find viable solutions.

2. In-service courses, workshops, seminars for the untrained cadre in the teaching profession.

3. Armchair inspections by education officers should be discouraged. They should pay regular and even surprise visits to these schools to acquaint themselves with the problems of each.

4. Consider the idea of inter-settlement transfers to ensure discipline and a more equal distribution of qualified teachers; for example, at present the Dakoni settlement has only one Grade II teacher.

According to our findings, about 35 per cent of school-aged children are not enrolled in settlement schools because of no clothing, food problems, the requirement to do domestic work or leja leja. Attendance of those enrolled where we could find operating registers - is irregular, and we believe this is the result of food shortages and undisciplined communities which allow children to dance all night on school nights. Drinking and smoking among children is too common and no one seems offended by the loss of our Ugandan standards.

The effect of the standard of administration of justice and the refugees, ignorance concerning the legal implications of their life - their rights and duties - has led to adverse results. Little attention has been paid to make refugees aware of their rights. The refugees' situation among the community of nationals is that of a people who have lost their human right to defence before the law. There have been cases of false imprisonment with little response from UNHCR.

The lack of an office delegated with the full-time duty of protecting refugees has rendered them susceptible to the procedural defects in the performance of the police and courts. The PM has been most co-operative and active in taking measures against unfair treatment of refugees. However, due to its immense administrative commitments, it cannot be expected to do all that a separate office created for the purpose could achieve.

Refugees, too, are culpable. Their brothers may be falsely imprisoned for long periods and they do not inform PM or UNHCR; for example, the Limbe teacher whose colleagues kept quiet and 'ate' two months of his salary while he remained four months in Yei prison uncharged and untried. Some disciplinary committees also practise irregular procedures. In Pakula, our team found an alleged 'thief' being beaten to extract a confession. While some committees have achieved remarkable co-operation with local chiefs in their administration, others have not. Those responsible should organize some seminars where all these committees could meet and learn from each other's mistakes and successes and be trained by a qualified Sudanese on law and proper procedure as well as their rights.

Although we found settlers determined to become self-sufficient, there are many impediments. Some have already been noted in the discussion on food. Nowhere could we find people who had the sufficient tools for whatever reason. Seeds were often late or not enough or non- viable. Land problems are acute in many settlements. In Limuru the land allocated is not only far away but is infested by tsetse fly and we are made to understand that sleeping sickness has recently struck Kala, in addition to their rabies problem and unvaccinated dogs. Cattle are dying in Morsak and have mostly already died in Mondikolo yet veterinary service is not available. Again, it is the problem of agency co-ordination. One such trained person is in a settlement, Limbe, with hardly any animals. Why can't such a person travel among settlements regularly? Here in Kala, chickens have nearly all died both this and last year for lack of treatment. Poultry farming is one of the projects supposedly encouraged by the agencies. Eggs have been delivered - imported from Kenya - for bringing improved breeds to the Sudan. They were distributed in 50s and 60s - many were broken, others were eaten just because the recipients did not have hens willing to set. Why not encourage a local breed? Many Ugandans brought improved poultry with them. Why not use them instead of relying on imported exotic chickens? Wild animals are a continuing problem to farmers and that is why, here at Kala, people resisted killing their dogs. At Dororolili the problem of even lions, hyenas and buffalo is so serious that people fear to walk out of their houses at night. We learned that buffalo have walked through the settlement at night.

We know now that in YRD [Yei River District] there are more Ugandans outside settlements than in assisted settlements. These people are apparently better off in terms of integrating with Sudanese although there are problems. They have taken the initiative to build many schools, chapels, mosques and we even found two dispensaries which they had built. One, at Renu, is complete with staff houses, but GMT promises to send a staff person and supplies have never been kept. As far as we could find out, no extra medicines have been supplied to these areas despite an incredible rise in population and recently three or four private clinics run by refugees have been closed and two microscopes confiscated. These 100,000 plus people would be the cheapest to assist. Their requests are more reasonable than ours in settlements. Tools, textbooks, blackboards, medicine, clean water, seeds, were most often mentioned. Agencies who helped them would at least know they were helping Sudanese at the same time.

One of the little sung success stories in the refugee programme is the market system which has been established with literally no aid or programme. YRD's big problem has been the lack of markets in the rural areas and now they are there, thriving, and benefiting natives and refugees alike. Serious attention should be paid to the need for transport to carry produce from settlements to Yei and later Juba and now to help shopkeepers carry commodities needed to sell from Yei to the settlements. This is most urgent in the settlements which are far away from main centres. Six sacks of cabbage lay in Dororolili and two hundred sacks of charcoal in Wudabi. There is no way for either to reach the market, yet agency vehicles ply all these roads and we say we want to help income generation.

This need for transport is even greater among the self-settled as some of them are producing surpluses in significant quantities already and next year there will be even more. If, as Mr Asiko says, it will be the self-settled who will be feeding the settlements, the agencies should take another look at the transport developmental needs of the areas. A positive way to start would be to fund some privately-owned lorries owned by refugees and put them on a regular route which would pass all settlements and border points weekly. This would assist the Sudanese farmer too, who now depends on the vehicles and buyers originating from the north and who pay very low prices to the producers. An investment in such a system would require only a bit of initiative on the part of someone to organize it and it would pay for itself very quickly.

Retail traders in the self-settled areas pay extremely high licensing fees. Yet in settlements people pay nothing although there have been attempts to collect fees. It would be good to standardize policy in this field as in the case of the collection of poll tax which happens among some self-settled and not among others.

Although it was not a direct part of our research, we found everywhere that refugees believed Barbara had come to register them for repatriation. After the UNHCR man came from Arua, we were almost unable to continue our interviews and at Panyume some of our team were threatened with bows and arrows as one had seen her travelling with Sjoerd at Baze, and was sure she was helping take people back to be killed. UNHCR should use refugees to explain about repatriation and their rights because, as one put it, 'When a white man brings the forms, people believe that the white man has seen the situation and it is OK.' We think that there should be the proposed fact-finding mission before any more repatriation and we find it funny to be told that parts of Uganda are OK but don't go back to other parts. Our people in the settlement are in deep confusion and the incident last week at Mogiri and Mondikilo where Ugandans were allowed to visit settlements straight from Moyo makes us all wonder if there is anything like protection of refugees.

Our report has been very critical and it may appear that we Ugandans are not grateful for what is being attempted on our behalf. That is not the case. We are most grateful to Sudan. Many of us experienced a different welcome in Zaire and we know who is really our benefactor. As we have moved about the settlements we have tried to educate our brothers and we feel that perhaps this is one of the important side effects of our research. We feel that if expatriate agency staff had the opportunity we have had, to do intensive fieldwork, they would appreciate that we have only touched on a few of the problems which need improvement and we have confidence that if you take the tour I suggested earlier, you will find it more difficult than we (who have now seen so much suffering over the past four months) to simply accept the status quo. From what we have learned about refugee programmes elsewhere, we believe that what we have in YRD is probably better than most anywhere. On one hand, that is a frightening thought. On the other, let us all, Sudanese, refugees and expatriates together, strive to make it much better.