Under cover of darkness, amid shredded tents and shelters deserted by peace, “M.S.” surveyed his long odyssey: from South Kordofan to Omdurman, then Rabak, Renk, Juba and, ultimately, Uganda’s Kiryandongo settlement.
Yet Kiryandongo, once deemed his final safe stop, rapidly became another crucible of fear. On the evening of Thursday, July 11, over 100 young Nuer tribesmen from South Sudan launched a surprise assault on Sudanese refugees in Cluster L East. Armed with sticks, machetes and other weapons, they struck tents and makeshift homes.
Atar obtained a statement from the Sudanese Refugee Leadership Office confirming that the multi-axis attack wounded at least 16 people, four critically. Despite police intervention, no suspects were detained; authorities merely transported some of the injured to the under-resourced Pandoli Hospital, while locals carried out additional evacuations.
Each stop offered only fleeting safety, and now even Kiryandongo’s promise is under threat again.
M.S., recounting his displacement journey from Sudan to Uganda
Following a renewed round of attacks by Nuer refugees on the homes of Sudanese refugees, Ugandan authorities imposed a curfew last Sunday, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. One Sudanese refugee, named Kabbashi, was killed, and more than 30 others were injured.’
Recalling recent months, M.S said he first settled in Cluster G before moving to Cluster B. As insecurity spread from L East back into B, he found himself imperilled once more.
“We were forced from Cluster B and endured a harrowing night in the reception area until UNHCR vehicles moved us to Cluster G. We left behind our homes and tents and now face yet another scramble for shelter under daunting conditions,” M.S told Atar.
This was not M.S’s first displacement, but he calls it the most brutal. Each stop offered only fleeting safety, and now even Kiryandongo’s promise is under threat again.
Limited response, temporary measures
Despite the severity of the attacks, official and community actions have been modest and short-lived. The Sudanese Refugee Leadership Office, in coordination with UNHCR, established temporary housing within Cluster G to host those displaced from Clusters B, C and L, and set up a communal kitchen serving a single lunch at 3pm daily.
UNHCR data as of July 13, 2025 lists 86,547 registered Sudanese refugees in Uganda, 86,341 recognised, 206 pending asylum, with 3,528 identified as having special needs. They reside across ten “clusters”: G; L East; L West; I; A; B; C; BQ; K; and MR. South Sudanese occupy every cluster except G, which is reserved exclusively for Sudanese.
After the latest violence, dozens fled to the UNHCR reception centre seeking protection. Authorities, camp leadership and UNHCR then evacuated these sites and moved the vulnerable to Cluster G, where emergency tents were pitched and food and lodging services reorganised.
Additional measures included shaded shelters for women, children and the elderly, and transport provided by LWF and police to ferry displaced families to interim sites.
In an urgent statement on July 16, 2025, obtained by Atar, Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister for Refugees called on partners and humanitarian agencies to bolster security in Kiryandongo. It noted the District Commissioner’s request for a Ugandan military deployment and pleaded for immediate logistical, food and fuel support to stabilise the camp and protect civilian lives.
Tarpaulins left hanging
The Ugandan workers abandoned me after the recent unrest, and with them went the tarpaulins.
H.J., Sudanese refugee, on how the violence halted his attempt to build shelter
Notably, Atar interviews in Kampala and Kiryandongo indicate these attacks are not materially motivated, suggesting ethnic or political targeting. Hussein Taiman, head of the Sudanese refugee community, said the recent spate of violence “deepens fears of systematic targeting amid a void of accountability or deterrence”.
Human rights lawyer and field monitor Arbab Abukif, in a statement to Atar, warned that the security situation “poses a direct threat to refugees’ lives” and violates international obligations to protect refugee safety.
In mid-February 2025, “H.J.” arrived in Kiryandongo fleeing Sudan’s war and settled in Cluster F, painstakingly building a small shelter.
“I had just fixed the frame; only the tarpaulins remained,” he recalled. “The Ugandan workers abandoned me after the recent unrest, and with them went the tarpaulins.”
His loss went beyond tools or stalled construction: the half-finished tent symbolises the broader Sudanese refugee experience in Kiryandongo, faltering starts, sudden disruptions and a fragile sense of security that can vanish at any moment.
A settlement bearing displacement’s memory
Kiryandongo settlement in northern Uganda is one of the country’s oldest and largest refugee sites. Its use dates back to 1954, when Britain’s colonial administration asked the Bunyoro kingdom to allocate land for Kenyans fleeing the Mau Mau uprising. Some descendants of those early refugees still live there today.
In 1990, the Ugandan government, in partnership with UNHCR, officially designated the site to resettle refugees from South Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The settlement underwent major demographic shifts in 2014 when a wave of South Sudanese fled the country’s civil war, eventually comprising the vast majority of its population.
But 2023 brought another transformation. Uganda began sheltering Sudanese refugees escaping the latest conflict, alongside South Sudanese asylum seekers, bringing multiple generations of Sudanese and South Sudanese conflict victims to one site steeped in war’s legacy and ethnic division.
From emergency hosting to integration
A photo of the agricultural plots allocated to refugees.
Uganda has adopted one of Africa’s most progressive refugee policies, anchored in its 2006 Refugees Act, the national constitution and international conventions. The 2015 “Refugee Settlement Transformation Agenda” seeks to evolve settlements from emergency camps into permanent communities by allocating land to refugees for housing and farming, and fostering integration with host populations.
Nakivale settlement exemplifies this approach, while Kiryandongo today hosts tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees among Uganda’s roughly 1.92 million refugees spread across some 13 settlements. Yet the divergent political and ethnic backgrounds, particularly between South Sudanese and Sudanese refugees, have sown tensions that threaten social cohesion within the camp.
Uganda’s Refugees Act empowers the prime minister to allocate temporary or permanent land plots to refugees, granting them most rights enjoyed by citizens, including land use for residence and cultivation, though without ownership or sale rights.
Registered refugees receive a package that includes a 30 × 30 metre plot and construction materials, plus a separate plot for farming. They also gain access to markets and services, and host communities participate in certain assistance programmes to ease friction.
From rhetoric to reality
These are seeds of hatred that can blossom into mass violence.
Musa Isa, Sudanese refugee activist, on the rise of ethnic slurs and weapon training among children
In 1997, UNHCR attempted to hand over management of Kiryandongo to the Ugandan government, which declined, opting instead for a “self-reliance” strategy.
This policy was codified in the 2006 Act but has faced implementation hurdles. In a 2000 paper, researcher Tanja Kaiser documented a lack of coordination between UNHCR and the government, noting that “self-reliance” was often reduced to food production, with other needs: healthcare and education, overlooked. Although UNHCR later declared Kiryandongo self-sufficient, the settlement suffered from weak infrastructure, service shortfalls and rampant disease, undermining the model and exposing the gap between vision and reality.
Recent tensions did not emerge in a vacuum. The camp has weathered repeated cycles of coexistence and conflict over the past decade.
South Sudanese journalist and activist Bathumi Ayul, now based in the camp, notes that refugees arriving after the 2013 conflict, from Upper Nile, Jonglei and Panyikang, created a multi-ethnic community of Nuer, Shilluk, Dinka and others.
The 2023 influx of Sudanese refugees aggravated strains between long-settled South Sudanese and new Sudanese arrivals, especially after refugee registration for South Sudanese was halted, land once earmarked for them reassigned, and some were dropped from aid lists in favour of new Sudanese registrants.
Disputes should never become a cause for dismantling peaceful coexistence or endangering everyone.
Bathumi Ayul, South Sudanese journalist and activist, on the stakes of rising tensions in the camp
Sudanese refugee activist Musa Isa points to historical grievances, particularly among the Nuer, against the “northerners” and Dinka dating back to the 2013 conflict and the Nairobi Agreement.
“A clear class divide exists. Some Sudanese receive remittances or engage in trade, fuelling resentment. They are viewed as ‘better off’ than the original residents,” Musa says.
Musa also links the current crisis to land disputes: farmland once cultivated by some long-settled refugee communities was converted into housing for new arrivals, stoking economic and livelihood tensions.
The lack of coordination between community leadership has deepened grievances and inflamed conflict, especially between the Nuer and certain Sudanese groups, amid rising looting and weakening local authority.
Bathumi warns that refugees share the same hardships and “disputes should never become a cause for dismantling peaceful coexistence or endangering everyone.” He urged that the camp, a microcosm of refugee societies, still holds potential for genuine integration if community will, international funding and smart planning address administrative shortcomings in resource distribution, ensuring fairness and transparency.
Musa highlights another alarming trend:
“Ethnic slurs, like ‘Jango’ and ‘Janqei’, are spreading among children in some clusters. These are seeds of hatred that can blossom into mass violence. Some kids even train with homemade ‘kokab’ weapons, with no educational or psychosocial support.”
What unfolds in Kiryandongo today is not simple lawlessness but a warning… refuge should not be an extension of war, but rather a chance to escape it.
Between international neglect and local mismanagement
Observers told Atar the crisis erupted in part from the camp administration’s inability to manage tensions, compounded by a severe police shortage and steep funding cuts from international agencies, especially after UNHCR’s budget was slashed and United States support via USAID halted.
“The camp was not prepared to receive such numbers after the April 15 war. Resources are scarce, schools are overflowing, and many youths have dropped out,” activist Edison Joseph notes.
Though security challenges mount, health and livelihood crises are equally dire. Kiryandongo’s health and food services have sharply deteriorated.
Refugees told Atar that cuts to maternal and child health programmes have driven up malnutrition and anaemia rates, especially among women and children.
These shortages persist as only 12 per cent of Uganda’s 2025 national refugee response plan has been funded, making under-resourcing a life-or-death issue rather than mere mismanagement.
Funding has plunged compared with 2024, when $857.9 million was requested and only 46 per cent secured. In 2025, despite a $968 million appeal, funding as of March stood at just 12 per cent, even as the refugee population climbed toward 1.9 million by July amid escalating conflicts in Sudan and the DRC.
Refuge isn’t a battlefield
What unfolds in Kiryandongo today is not simple lawlessness but a warning, of relief politicisation, of ignoring conflict roots and of failing to manage diversity. As refugees seek protection and dignity, leaving them exposed to strife risks perpetuating violence and undermining the humanitarian values meant to guide aid.
After all, refuge should not be an extension of war, but rather a chance to escape it.
The Atar – Uganda team included a group of editors and correspondents:
- Hoyam Alyasa
- Juluis Algaely
- Bira Kerra
- Ali Al ‘Arash
- Amar Jamal
