Adjumani, Uganda – Lindiro Jane fled the war twice. The first time was in 2016, when the violence renewed in South Sudan pushed her, her husband and their six children on the other side of the border in the refugee reinstallation camp in Pagiririya in Uganda.
At the time, the World Food Program provided refugees a monthly cash aid of around 31,000 Ugandan shillings per person (US $ 9). It was not much but advanced his family. She completed this money by preparing a local beer, which she sold for other refugees.
But every year, donors’ money has decreased as Cavid-19, the war in Ukraine and other priorities have drawn international attention and dollars from the Ugandan refugee program. In mid-2024, the monthly aid of the family fell at only 13,000 shillings per family member, or about US $ 3.50, and US $ 28 in total for the family of eight members. It was too little for his family to survive.
At the same time, the other refugees said it was safer to go home. Even some Ugandan government officials have encouraged families to go home, she said. Lindiro took the chance and returned to Kerepi, an eastern equatorial part of South Sudan. For about five months, the bet borne fruit. They plowed the earth. They planted sorghum and corn. For the first time in years, Lindiro says that she felt in control of her life.
But one morning in October at the farm, she heard distant cries followed by the cracking of the gunshots. A few hours later, she returned home to find lifeless bodies of her neighbors scattered through the ground. She then knew that going home could have been a mistake.
“It was a lie,” said Lindiro, referring to what government representatives and other refugees told him.
Again, his family fled to Pagirinya, the camp they had left shortly before. They left their sorghum and their corn behind them.
Then, in January, President Donald Trump reduced all foreign aid in the United States and largely dismantled the American Agency for International Development (USAID), a key donor of the response of refugees. In 2024, the United States gave Uganda US $ 11 million, totaling $ 83 million since the start of the 2023 fiscal year.
The rations that were already thin was immediately reduced again. Families who, at some point, received $ 9 per person per person had to be satisfied with US $ 2 per month per month, and even this could disappear entirely while the funding of the donors of the refugees continues to shrink.
Danger at home and hungry in exile
In all East Africa, thousands of families of refugees such as his, especially from South Sudan, the youngest country in the world which has spent a large part of its short life in a Stop-Start civil war, shuttles between danger at home and hunger in exile. Over the years, many have fled in neighboring Uganda, the largest hosting nation of African refugees and housing around 1.8 million refugees, almost half of the South Sudan.
But international funding for refugees has decreased sharply, and although insecurity in certain countries such as South Sudan continues, some turn home.
Since the president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar – leader of the popular movement of Sudan, and former vice -president – signed a peace agreement in 2018, more than 390,000 refugees returned to South Sudan in Uganda, although the figures are probably higher due to the informal nature of many yields.
Some have returned home hoping that the truce would hold, and many others have been forced to go out due to the reduction in support for the refugee colonies in Uganda. The model is the same for neighboring Sudan returnees, who is involved in his own civil war. In a March 2024 survey by UNHCR, the United Nations Agency for Refugees, many cited food rations as a reason to leave.
Once back in South Sudan, where tribal fights, a peace plan in standby and other factors push the country to the edge of another war, other civil war repatriated find insecurity and an almost total lack of services.
Some, like Lindiro, end up making the heartbreaking decision to return to the very camps they left, only to find them even more fragile than before.
In fact, WFP and UNHCR, the two organizations coordinating the support of refugees in Uganda and which have been mainly funded by USAID, warn an even wider collapse.
In 2017, the UNHCR operated with a budget of nearly $ 220 million in Uganda and, at the end of 2023, this money fell to 141 million dollars, even if the number of refugees continued to grow, according to a policy file of 2024 by the EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations, an independent and based on Brgentels thinking group.
This year, the agency only obtained 17% of its 2025 budget. Without urgent funding, says the agency, it will be forced to reduce basic services, including shelter, food, drinking water and child protection.
PAM also experiences a funding deficit of around $ 50 million for 2025, explains Marcus Prior, director of the acting country in Uganda. Although they do not plan to withdraw services, he says that they will continue with their priorization program, focusing solely on the most vulnerable refugee population living in the 13 Uganda colonies.
In fact, this May, the organization was forced to reduce the number of refugees it supports to 663,000, says Prior. This means that nearly a million refugees will be cut off from help.
Already, between March and May 2025, malnutrition among refugees increased to 21.5%, well above the emergency threshold of the World Organization of 15%, says Prior
And a CDNC report published in April shows that, from January, nine children under the age of five died due to malnutrition. Health centers have closed, around 250 health workers have been dismissed and hundreds of early childhood caregivers too. And this is only part of the damage by the financing cuts.
If this continues, Prior said that “refugees can use negative adaptation strategies”. They could remove their children from school, move to other countries or go home despite the dangers. It could create new humanitarian dangers, he said.
Crowded camps and empty chests
Despite the worsening conditions, the flow of newcomers has not slowed down. The fights renewed in the eastern DRC, fresh thrusts in South Sudan and Sudan on the scale of the civil war between the army and the rapid support forces – which triggered a six -time increase in cross -border movements in May 2023 – send new waves of people to the response to refugees already tense in Uganda.
At the border, the transport and reception centers overflow. Some work their capacity six times.
In 2025 alone, the country received around 90,000 new arrivals from Sudan, South Sudan and DRC, says Prior.
The colonies will always adopt newcomers, explains Carol Sparks, head of UNHCR of external relations, strategic partnerships and communications in Uganda. However, without sufficient support, the growing pressure could quickly push the situation in crisis.
Rose Foni, a 40 -year -old Sudanese who tried to reintegrate into the house in May 2024, but was forced to return to the Pigirinya camp while fighting the fighting in his village is worried about what could happen if Uganda is left alone by donors.
This is a possibility, because the other donors also reconcile help. The United Kingdom, which also provides significant funding for the Ugandan refugee program in February, announced that in 2027, it will reduce its assistance expenses to only 0.3% of its general gross income.
But Jogo Titus, the regional refugee office officer at the Prime Minister’s office in the District of Adjumani, said that the government is determined to ensure that refugees are autonomous, instead of depending on aid. “These are our brothers and sisters, we cannot let them die in the absence of foreign help,” he said.
A strategy that the government is pursuing is to speak with local communities to rent land to refugees at subsidized costs so that they can grow.
While the Uganda refugee policy guarantees the land, in practice, the implementation depends on the local negotiations, the good will of the host community and the cost. Disputes between landowners and refugees have previously been flared due to the reduction of land plots and compensation problems.
In addition, as resources decrease, many refugees simply cannot afford to rent it. “It is very expensive to rent land here,” says Lindiro. Some owners ask between 100,000 (US $ 28) – 1,50000 (US $ 42) per plantation season.
For the moment, while Lindiro awaits and hopes peace, she completes her drop in cash by selling firewood and thatched grass. She no longer brews beer after a doctor warned her that the heat of brewing was bad for her health.
“In this trap, I find myself only one option, to (be) dependent on the report which continues to shrink,” explains Lindiro.
Yotam Gidron, a research partner at the University of Oxford Studies Center, warns that if the cups are continuing, even more people will be forced to go home despite the current dangers.
“As problematic or undesirable as it may seem for donors,” he says, maintaining humanitarian aid is essential to protect refugees.