KAMPALA, April 18 (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food programme (WFP) has said a shortage of donations has forced it to cut food rations for more than a million people uprooted by a vicious two-decade rebellion in northern Uganda. The WFP provides emergency food to 1.3 million people displaced by fighting between the government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels. Many are unable to till fields around their camps for fear of attack by marauding guerrillas. "In April, WFP was forced to reduce the individual food aid package for (all of) the displaced to just 40 percent of the minimum daily energy requirement," the WFP said in a statement late on Tuesday. Emergency coordinator for Ugandan refugees Matthew McIvenna outlined a range of problems if the current level of rations persisted. "Malnutrition figures, particularly the under-5s, would begin to deteriorate," he told Reuters. "They would have to find alternatives. They could be forced into areas that aren't safe." More children would drop out of school and more women and girls would be forced into prostitution to survive, he added. The WFP also said it had cut some food aid to 182,000 Sudanese refugees still in Uganda after fleeing southern Sudan's two-decade civil war, which ended in 2005. The LRA, one of Africa's most feared guerrilla armies, is notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating victims and kidnapping thousands of children to swell its ranks. Talks between the rebels and government last year resulted in a truce that gave many refugees hopes of returning home. A few hundred thousand have already done so. But a peace deal remains a distant prospect, the rebels' top commanders are hiding from war crimes indictments against them in the International Criminal Court, and many Ugandans fear a resumption of one of Africa's longest conflicts.
