Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement


Bidibidi Refugee Settlement is a refugee camp in northwestern Uganda. With over 270,000 South Sudanese refugees fleeing the ongoing civil war, as of early 2017 it was the largest refugee settlement in the world. As of 2018, that distinction was claimed by Kutapalong refugee camp for displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Geography

Bidibidi covers 250 square kilometers of the eastern half of the district of Yumbe, stretching southward from the South Sudanese border and spilling over into Moyo District along the western bank of the Kochi River.

History

Bidibidi was a small village before becoming a refugee settlement which was opened in August 2016. Since then, the Uganda Government and other NGOs have worked to create a settlement rather than a camp.

Health

There have been growing concerns about health conditions and access to health services as the number of South Sudan refugees entering Uganda continues to increase, with Reuters reporting that 180 refugees died in Bidibidi in the first six months of 2017. This is compounded by how there is often limited accuracy of health measurements in camp settings, with under-reporting of deaths by humanitarian organizations typically occurring more frequently than over-reporting of deaths.
From a human rights and ethics perspective, there are also questions about whether people with different physical abilities or the elderly are de-prioritized in these settlements, receiving less resources compared to younger, able-bodied residents in good health. In settlements located in the Ayilo District of Northern Uganda, for example, the organization Caritas reports that programs have been designed to provide more assistance for building latrines to groups identified as vulnerable, such as older residents, disabled residents, and :simple:Child-headed family|child-headed households.
Furthermore, a 2016 U.S. State Department report on trafficking warns that South Sudanese children in Northern Ugandan refugee settlements may be vulnerable to trafficking, with the UNHCR suspecting that instances of trafficking are already occurring among young South Sudanese refugees. Unfortunately, reliably quantifying the number of trafficked children can be a challenge due to lack of effective monitoring, corruption, insufficient protection of victims to come forward, differences in definitions of terms, and other contextual aspects.