There is a route through the Agoro hills that does not appear on most maps of the South Sudan crisis, and yet it has quietly become one of the most consistent migration corridors in the region. Families walk it out of Magwii County, Torit, and Juba, cross into Lamwo District through porous, unmanned border points, and arrive at reception points that were never designed to register them for the reason they actually left.
They are fleeing conflict, and Uganda's registration system rightly protects them as political refugees. But increasingly, in the same breath, they describe something else: a heatwave that closed their school for two weeks, a harvest that failed for the third year running, a well that ran dry before the rains ever came.
This is the same climate signal our earlier commentary traced through Karamoja's thermometers and Sembabule's water tanker bills. What that piece described in degrees and shillings, this one has to describe in people, because Northern Uganda is not only measuring this El Niño-driven whiplash in heat records. It is absorbing it in the form of new arrivals at Palabek, Bidibidi, and the other settlements that already carry the weight of the world's fourth-largest refugee population, at the exact moment international funding for that response is contracting.
Key Data Points (2025–2026)
- ~1.95 million: Uganda's refugee and asylum-seeker population as of August 2025, the majority from South Sudan and the DRC, making Uganda Africa's largest refugee-hosting country (UNHCR).
- 73,806: Refugees from 27 South Sudanese ethnic communities living in Palabek Settlement, Lamwo District, in a district whose total population is 213,156 (UNHCR 2025; UBOS 2024, cited in Nancy et al., 2025).
- 41–45°C: Temperature range recorded in Juba during the February–May 2024 heatwave that directly drove a documented surge in arrivals at Palabek through the Agoro hills entry point (Gulu University field study, 2025).
- ~6%: Share of required 2026 funding secured for Uganda's refugee health response as of early 2026, already affecting more than 735,500 refugees across Bidibidi, Imvepi, Rhino Camp, Palabek, and Kiryandongo (IRC).
- $2.70–$4.90: Monthly nutrition assistance per person for moderately to highly vulnerable refugees, with comprehensive maternal and child feeding programmes suspended across most settlements, including Nakivale (UNICEF Uganda).
A Displacement That Does Not Fit the Form
Uganda's Office of the Prime Minister and UNHCR staff at the Lokung reception point know exactly what they are seeing when a family arrives from Magwii or Torit describing a heatwave rather than an armed group. A 2025 Gulu University study of Lamwo District, based on interviews with refugee learners, zonal leaders, teachers, and OPM staff, documented this pattern directly: households displaced primarily by extreme heat, collapsing agriculture, and water scarcity, who are nonetheless registered as political refugees because no other category exists for them. Researchers were told plainly that current legal and policy limitations mean these arrivals must be registered as political refugees for convenience, since many are also coming from a conflict-affected background.
That convenience carries a cost. It means Uganda's own data understates how much of the pressure on Palabek, and likely on Bidibidi, Rhino Camp, and Kiryandongo further along the same climate belt, is being driven by heat and drought rather than by fighting alone.
The 1951 Refugee Convention was not built to recognise a heatwave as persecution, and international law has not caught up with what Northern Uganda's border districts already know from experience: that conflict and climate stress in South Sudan are no longer separable causes, they are the same push factor arriving through the same gate.
Comparing Two Kinds of Pressure on the Same Settlements
| Indicator | Climate-driven arrivals | Funding-driven strain |
|---|---|---|
| What is happening | Extreme heat and failed harvests in Juba, Magwii County, and Torit are pushing South Sudanese households across the Agoro hills into Palabek, often outside formal OPM/UNHCR reception points | Health and nutrition funding for Uganda's refugee response has collapsed to roughly 6% of what is required for 2026, forcing clinic closures and suspended feeding programmes |
| Who is most exposed | Students and school-age children, whose enrolment surges have left schools like Paluda S.S. and Ogili Hill Primary overcrowded, with learners studying under trees | Pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under two, tens of thousands of whom are now at risk of malnutrition as targeted feeding programmes are suspended |
| Compounding effect | Unregistered or delayed-registration arrivals strain host-community land, water points, and firewood supplies, accelerating local deforestation | Reduced rations and clinic capacity push both refugees and host communities toward the same shrinking pool of local resources, sharpening the competition climate stress already created |
| The 2026 reading | A durable, repeating seasonal pattern tied to South Sudan's own worsening heat exposure, not a one-off emergency | A structural funding gap layered directly on top of a rising, climate-linked caseload, with no indication either pressure will ease before the other |
Sources: UNHCR Uganda country data (2025); Nancy, Alidri, Okello, Ochen & Reynolds, "Climate Refugees and Forced Migrations: Emerging Refugee Question in Lamwo District in Northern Uganda," African Journal of Climate Change and Resource Sustainability (2025); International Rescue Committee (2026); UNICEF Uganda (2026).
What Strained Settlements Look Like From the Inside
The Gulu University researchers who spent time in Palabek's nine zones did not find an abstraction. They found schools where enrolment spikes tied directly to the March-to-May heat window, with one secondary school registering roughly 500 learners into a single senior-one class in a term. They found zonal leaders describing a direct line from the heatwave to deforestation, as new arrivals dependent on firewood and charcoal cleared land the settlement could not spare. They found host-community landlords ceding land that was then overcultivated, with poor waste disposal following behind. And they found, candidly documented, rising tension among the Nuer, Dinka, Acholi, and Lango communities sharing the settlement, including a spike in youth arrests and several deaths in early 2024 that local leaders linked to overcrowding, disenfranchisement, and the strain of displacement itself.
None of this is unique to Palabek. It is the same story playing out with different place names across Bidibidi, Rhino Camp, Imvepi, and Kiryandongo, all of which the IRC now names as settlements where funding cuts are already colliding with new arrivals from South Sudan and the DRC. A settlement absorbing climate-driven arrivals needs more school capacity, more water infrastructure, and more conflict-sensitive programming precisely at the moment its health and nutrition budget has been cut by more than 90%. That is not two separate crises arriving on the same calendar. It is one crisis, climate displacement, meeting a second one, donor retrenchment, in the same nine zones.
Why This Belongs in the Same Conversation as ACERF
VISO's work in Lamwo District, including our support to establish the Health and Livelihood Initiative Uganda community-based organisation, sits inside exactly this intersection of host-community and refugee-serving programming. It is also why this commentary belongs alongside our earlier analysis of Uganda's climate whiplash and our continued development of the Anticipatory Climate Emergency Reserve Fund concept. A reserve fund built to pre-position resources ahead of forecast heat and flood events cannot stop at household water tankers and coffee losses in Sembabule and Masaka. The same forecastable heat signal driving Karamoja's temperatures past 35°C is arriving in South Sudan's Juba, Magwii, and Torit corridors first, and Northern Uganda's border districts and refugee settlements are already living with the second-order effect: displacement that current frameworks are not built to name, arriving into settlements whose international funding is already unraveling.
Uganda's refugee policy remains, on paper, one of the most progressive in the world: freedom of movement, the right to work, access to national services. What the Lamwo evidence shows is that policy generosity cannot substitute for resourcing when the population it protects is growing for reasons the underlying legal categories were never designed to capture. A family that walks out of Magwii because the harvest failed twice is no less in need of shelter than one fleeing an armed group, and Palabek's overcrowded classrooms and contested waste sites are the visible proof of what happens when that need outpaces both the legal definition and the funding envelope built around it.
Partner with VISO for Northern Uganda's Refugee and Host Communities
VISO Uganda works directly in the districts absorbing this pressure, from our field programming in Lamwo to the Anticipatory Climate Emergency Reserve Fund concept we are building to pre-position resources ahead of forecast climate shocks. We are seeking partners who can help fund resilience and reception capacity in refugee-hosting districts before the next heatwave in South Sudan sends the next wave of arrivals across the Agoro hills.
The Lamwo evidence and the funding data point in the same direction. Climate-induced displacement into Northern Uganda's refugee settlements is not a future scenario requiring new legal categories before anyone can act. It is a documented, repeating pattern with a known route, a known trigger season, and a known set of settlements already absorbing it, at the exact moment the resources meant to support them are being withdrawn. What happens in Palabek's classrooms and Bidibidi's clinics between now and the next South Sudanese heatwave will say a great deal about whether Northern Uganda's refugee response can hold, or whether it simply absorbs the next shock and reports the strain after the fact.