It’s right the world is helping Ukraine, but there is a major crisis unfolding elsewhere that’s going unnoticed
AID worker Ruth Jack gets help to more than 1.5million refugees in Uganda - but fears a deadly hunger crisis looms with funding cuts sparked by the Ukraine war.
The 51-year-old from Dumbarton, head of air operations in the African country for the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), coordinates flights bringing in aid.
Ruth, who now lives in Uganda with husband Duncan, 58, and son Samuel, 14, while daughters Rebekah, 25, and Sarah, 22, study in Glasgow, has worked at an airfield near Kampala since early last year.
A diversion of funds to higher profile crises - such as the Ukraine war - is causing hunger already, she says.
She said a critical funding pipeline for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and World Food Programme to assist refugees is set to end in September.
Many who have fled their homes due to violence in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] and South Sudan.
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Here she reveals that a diversion of funds to higher profile crises - such as the Ukraine war - is causing hunger already.
UGANDA has the highest population of refugees in all Africa.
There’s about 13 refugee camps. We fly a lot of humanitarian workers to those refugee camps or as close as we can get.
I run the airfield and I’m directing traffic.
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If you imagine a manager of an airport - that’s me. I manage all the facilities on the airfield and the maintenance of the planes, the logistics. We have around seventy staff and fly five light aircraft
It’s a disaster unfolding – we are already seeing stunted growth in children and, in some refugee settlements, families are living on £2.70 per month per person. Perhaps the world will notice when children are facing starvation across Uganda’s refugee communities.
I can hardly imagine more than one million refugees left without food or cash support. It’s a very big concern and thousands of lives are in danger. MAF is very busy trying to do all we can to help vulnerable and isolated communities.
Food shortages are under way, coupled with widespread uncertainty and critical social and health issues. Meanwhile, eyes are turned towards Ukraine and many lives are being forgotten elsewhere.
We’ve already seen domestic violence increasing, we have already seen things like child trafficking and prostitution increasing, because people are becoming more desperate.
It’s already having an impact. If you imagine lots of people suddenly told they are no longer going to be fed, the obvious reaction is anger and they will use different means to express their anger. So they may start riots, become angry with humanitarian staff.
Refugees may have children dependent on them. They may have no way of getting to a city or place of work. They don’t have any means to fix it.
Children in refugee camps have already been through trauma. They have probably left their home and a place of war.
They may have seen loved-ones killed, they may have lost their parents. In a lot of these places there are children-headed households. It’s the eldest child looking after the other children because they have had to leave parents behind or their parents have been killed.
It’s a very unsafe place often for children. They can be trafficked, exploited for sex. Often humanitarian workers will put in safeguards for children, but the more the money runs out, the harder that becomes.
We complain in Scotland about there being 30 pupils per teacher. But I was at a school where there were more than 400 children and there were four teachers. The problem is the funding for the teachers is running out. The teachers stop coming to school because they know no one is going to pay them.
But the children rely on coming to school for something to eat. Often it’s the only place where they will get a proper meal. Children will walk for a couple of miles to get to school to be educated in a place where there is only one desk between six of them. They’ll do that because there is food in that school. By and large it’s probably the safest place for them to be.
When I met these kids they were very excited and were very happy to be at school. It’s a luxury for them to be at school.
You want to pick every one of them up and take them home and give them a good meal and a ball to play with - but you can’t.
My children would probably tell you I’m not that much of a softy. In the kind of work that I do you need to be fairly resilient and thick-skinned.
My children give me funny names like ‘superwoman’. They think that I save the world, but that’s completely not true. I have a small job that’s part of a larger response.
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I can’t fix world hunger. It leaves you feeling very hopeless and sad. It’s actually heartbreaking. But if I was always upset by what’s going on in the refugee population then I wouldn’t actually be any use.
In Uganda there is a disaster unfolding and the world needs to know about it.
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