A Ugandan government minister is facing criticism after calling those who have died of hunger in his country “idiots”.
Many have deemed Henry Okello Oryem’s comments tone-deaf.
In 2022, more than 2,200 people died of starvation and related illnesses in north-east Uganda, a report by an official human rights body said.
But Mr Oryem argued that given the favourable climate and fertile land people should be able to grow food for themselves.
“It’s only an idiot, a real idiot, that can die of hunger in Uganda,” the state minister for foreign affairs told the NTV Uganda television channel.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Ugandan government minister is facing criticism after calling those who have died of hunger in his country “idiots”.
In 2022, more than 2,200 people died of starvation and related illnesses in north-east Uganda, a report by an official human rights body said.
But Mr Oryem argued that given the favourable climate and fertile land people should be able to grow food for themselves.
Moses Aleper, a legislator for Chekwii county, which is part of the affected Karamoja region, told the BBC that Mr Oryem’s views are “not right” and “unfortunate coming from a minister who knows what goes on in this country”.
Prominent Ugandan author and journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo also hit out at Mr Oryem, saying that the minister failed to grasp “that hunger in a country like Uganda is a distribution/market problem”.
Official data on the current food situation in Karamoja is unavailable, but it often experiences hunger during dry seasons due to the region’s semi-arid climatic conditions.
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