About 90 non-government organisations have opposed a proposal in the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2005, to lift presidential term limits. The NGOs are under an umbrella body called the Coalition for Constitutional Amendments. "Lifting term limits is to ignore the very lessons we claim to have learnt," the National Coordinator of the Human Rights Network, Mr Martin Masiga, also co-ordinating the Uganda Human Rights House Project, told journalists at Collin Hotel.

Following on from previous Refugee Law Project (RLP) updates on the repatriation process for Rwandese refugees in Nakivale refugee settlement in September 2004 the RLP returned to Nakivale to investigate the ongoing repatriation process for Rwandese refugees. As of February 2005, approximately 2300 Rwandese refugees have been repatriated, and 300 Rwandese refugees are registered for repatriation.

On February 21 last year, rebels descended on Barlonyo displaced people's camp in northern Uganda's Lira district, burning all the huts and killing over 300 villagers in the internally displaced people's camp. A year later, as they marked the first anniversary of the massacre, villagers give their personal accounts of that bloody evening.

At least 100 schools that would otherwise not afford it have been able to buy computers at lower prices from an NGO that extends Information Technology to rural areas. The NGO, Uconnect imports used computers from Europe and USA, revamps them and supplies them to schools and organisations. The organisation also helps them to network their computer labs and to get Internet connections. In the first year of the project, the organisation distributed hundreds of computers to 60 mostly rural-based schools.

Days after an 18-day ceasefire between the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) expired on 22 February, the rebels have killed and maimed more than 30 people, officials told IRIN on Monday. The Ugandan army spokesman in the northern region, Paddy Ankunda, told IRIN suspected LRA insurgents had killed at least 24 people in several districts since the truce ended. Last Thursday, Ankunda added, the rebels sliced off the lips of eight women.

Refugees are continuing to arrive in western Uganda from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Local authorities in Kanungo District have reported the arrival of 177 people in Ishasha, on the shores of Lake Edward, which forms the natural border with DRC. This is the largest reported influx at Ishasha for more than a month. The newcomers, many of them in poor health, said they had fled fighting in their villages in the eastern DRC province of North Kivu. UNHCR will be transferring this new group to a permanent settlement for Congolese refugees.

Increased condom use and premature deaths from AIDS-related diseases might be playing more of a role in declining HIV prevalence in Uganda than abstinence and fidelity, according to a study presented at the 12th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, US.

The Ugandan government has made science subjects compulsory for secondary school students, and said it will preferentially fund university students taking science courses. Under the new policy, approved last month, biology, chemistry and physics classes will be compulsory for all secondary school students, and first year university students will have to take some science subjects.

Uganda's authorities have banned the play The Vagina Monologues, due to open in the capital, Kampala this weekend. The Ugandan Media Council said the performance would not be put on as it promoted and glorified acts such as lesbianism and homosexuality. It said the production could go ahead if the organisers "expunge all the offending parts". But the organisers of the play say it raises awareness of sexual abuse against women.

This Social Science Research Network paper outlines many of the specifics of the Ugandan Domestic Relations Bill (DRB). The Bill addresses women's property rights in marriage and women's right to negotiate sex on the grounds of health, sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen, prohibits FGM and criminalises widow inheritance. The authors uses a thorough explication of the particulars of the bill to exhort the Ugandan government to take responsibility for the discrimination and violence that many of its female citizens routinely suffer.

This paper examines the Government of Uganda's local settlement policy which requires refugees to live in formal camps, and examines its implications for refugees'livelihoods and their enjoyment of their legal rights in Uganda. Based on field research in Arua and Moyo districts, the findings explore the relative positions of refugees residing in settlements as well as those who have left or avoided the settlement system altogether.

The next few weeks will be decisive for peace efforts in Northern Uganda, says the International Crisis Group in a new briefing paper.

Factors on the ground which are favourable for peace include greater effectiveness in the counter-insurgency efforts of the Ugandan army, reduced support for the Lord's Resistance Army by the Sudanese government and pressure created as a result of an International Criminal Court investigation into the conflict.

A unilateral ceasefire declared by the Ugandan government was due to expire on February 22 and the ICG is urging that it be extended to give further impetus to peace efforts. "If the process is to succeed, a more secure, mutually agreed ceasefire needs to be in place and negotiations started on the terms of a final settlement by April when the rainy season (the best time for LRA operations) begins."

One of the recommendations made by the ICG is that the ICC tread carefully in their investigations into war crimes committed during the conflict and not issue warrants of arrest until April, when the direction of current peace efforts might be clearer. While the ICC investigations were "important steps toward accountability and an end to impunity" there was a risk that the LRA could be driven away from the peace process if prosecutions were launched.

The Northern part of Uganda, the ICG notes, has received increased attention by President Yoweri Museveni because it offers a potential vote pool ahead of elections in 2006. The luxury of strong support bases in the south and central parts of Uganda for the National Resistance Movement (NRM) are eroding and Museveni can expect support from the region if he can secure peace.

The eighteen-year insurgency in Northern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has displaced 1.6 million people, says the ICG.

* Compiled from the report, 'Peace in Northern Uganda: Decisive Weeks Ahead'. Read the full report at http://www.icg.org//library/documents/africa/central_africa/b022_peace_…

Among the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Northern Uganda are an estimated 44,000 "night commuters" in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts. The night commuters are mostly children, adolescents and women who flee their villages or IDP centres each night for town centres seeking safety from LRA attack. These night commuters represent only a small portion of the IDP population, but their situation dramatically illustrates how inadequate protection has led to increasing violence against children and adolescents.

In September 2004, staff from the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children went on a mission to northern Uganda. One focus of the mission was to look at the education situation in the north given that the region has been and is currently in a situation of violent conflict. With 1.6 million people displaced, learning systems and structures have been altered significantly, even with the Uganda government's pledge of Universal Primary Education (UPE).

The Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology (UICT) in conjunction with the East African Centre for Open Source Software is organising an Open Source Software (OSS) weekend to take place at the UICT campus in Nakawa, Uganda from Friday, February 25, 2005 to Sunday, February 27, 2005.

Poverty is preventing many Ugandan mothers from using drugs that prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and this has put more children at risk, health researchers said. "It is frustrating when these mothers come for a single dose of nevirapine to protect their unborn babies, but when they are discharged and told to report back, they don't," Phillipa Musoke, head of the paediatrics department of Uganda's Makerere University medical school, told IRIN.

Threats of arrest made by the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) to the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) may jeopardise an already shaky peace process, the Catholic Church said. "Their officials seem to lack some serious grasp of the situation, particularly the fact that to start war crimes investigations for the sake of justice at a time when the war is not yet over risks having, in the end, neither justice nor peace delivered," the Gulu Catholic Archdiocese's Justice and Peace Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.

Renewed fighting among various groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in areas close to the border with Uganda, has triggered new arrivals of refugees in western Uganda, an official of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Thursday. "There has been an upsurge in arrivals in the past four days. We have recorded at least 200 every day who, reportedly, are fleeing fighting in DRC, close to Kyoma and Kasenyi villages," Roberta Russo, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Kampala, said.

The government is in the process of drafting a bill providing for the creation of a special agency bringing together both Ugandan state radio and television. The draft bill is currently under examination by a Parliamentary committee. The future body, to be called the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), will take over the management of radio and television programs being broadcast respectively by Radio Uganda (RU) and Uganda Television (UTV). This initiative is in line with the government's desire not to cede control of RU and UTV to "foreign elements", and the importance of the two state broadcasters to national interest and security.

"A play called Vagina Monologues is coming to town. The first I hear of it is from Katie Richardson, actor with Kampala Amateur Dramatics Society and wife to the British High Commissioner. Katie and I gaze at each other. In Uganda? "Yes, I'm doubtful," says Katie. I say: "The word vagina is going to cause problems." Then I get a call from Anne Akia, my co-director at Straight Talk Foundation. Her friends Mumbi Kaigwa and Keith Pearson are bringing a play called Vagina Monologues. They want to see me and my husband. OK, I say. Then I ask: "What do you think, Anne? Vagina Monologues in Uganda at this time? Should we get involved?" She laughs, then sighs: "Haaa. I don't know...""