Restoring childhood: UNICEF and partners bring relief and play to displaced children
“We only have 26 stanches of pit latrines which under normal circumstances should serve 1,600 people."
From a distance, it is often hard to put a face to conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) until you set foot at Nyakabande Transit Centre in Kisoro District, western Uganda, 18 kilometres from Uganda’s Bunagana border.
Mothers, children, and men, visibly famished and exhausted, flood the waiting area in their thousands under the scorching sun. Nyakabande Transit Centre, originally built to accommodate 1,136 people, was on the 27 April 2025 inhabited by nearly 9,000 with more still coming in from the Bunagana Border Post.
The situation is vividly captured by Emmy Mukiindo, the Deputy Commandant at Nyakabande attached to the Office of the Prime Minister, who noted that the transit centre has exceeded its capacity by more than 700 per cent.
The influx of forcibly displaced people has further strained the supply quality and quantity of key resources such as water, food, shelter, and sanitation facilities such as latrines.
“We only have 26 stanches of pit latrines which under normal circumstances should serve 1,600 people. The cost of emptying these latrines has tripled, as has the frequency of emptying them from once to thrice a month,” Mukiindo explained.
Additionally, the usage of basic supplies as soap, sanitary pads, firewood for food preparation, and consumables such as biscuits, has exploded.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Nyakabande Transit Centre needs additional supplies and resources to ensure people have access to the minimum requirements in terms of water, sanitation and hygiene services.
UNICEF provided two tents for protection services and 25 handwashing facilities. Additionally, UNICEF boosted sanitation efforts with 50 packages of reusable sanitary pads and undertook an assessment of the existing water facilities to identify the gaps.
Malnutrition, a major threat
According to a mass nutrition assessment conducted at the end of April in Nyakabande revealed a Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate of 16.7 per cent among children under the age of five and 11.9 per cent among pregnant and lactating women. These figures surpass the emergency threshold, which is set at 15 per cent.
The situation is especially alarming among children who contract malaria.
Malnutrition is the most critical issue for children who represent 50 per cent of the new arrivals. With funding from Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), UNICEF is providing nutritional supplies like ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) that will save the lives of children crossing into Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo with and without their parents/guardians.
John Nyakahuma, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Kisoro District, is grateful to UNICEF and other partners, whose support he said was “timely and necessary”, without which “the district would struggle.”
Nyakahuma decried major staffing gaps in areas of health and nutrition; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and child protection.
UNICEF is supporting the temporary deployment of health and nutritional workers in Nakabande and Matanda transit centres.
Child-friendly space, a game changer
Forcibly displaced people witness untold traumatic situations such as sexual violence, murder, which take a physical and emotional toll on them. Children especially bear the sharpest brunt of this trauma.
At the Nyakabande Transit Centre, a dedicated child-friendly space was set up, a safe environment where children can play and receive psycho-social support services. More than 3,000 children benefit from this space for diverse indoor and outdoor recreational activities.
Cognisant of the need for children to play and enjoy their childhood, UNICEF supported the child-friendly space with ten recreational kits that included footballs, volleyballs, netballs and several board games that the children put to the test immediately.
These playing materials will greatly enhance the children's experience and help take their minds off the trauma they have endured in the last couple of days.
