At least 4,447 children living with HIV face intensified agony after an institution caring for them announced likely closure of its support programme due to a funding shortfall. Dr Emmanuel Luyirika, the country director for Mildmay Uganda, said they are broke and could freeze paediatric services within six months, he told a press conference.

Dr Kizza Besigye has called for the resignation of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General after the Constitutional Court ordered that he and 10 others be discharged from any further prosecution arising from the treason charges they have been facing since 2005. All the five judges said they could not allow continued trial of the suspects when their fundamental human rights were being grossly violated by state agents.

Ugandan health workers are concerned by the growing number of HIV-positive teens who are abandoning their HIV treatment after turning to bogus religious leaders. 'Over the years we have noticed a growing trend of adolescents and caregivers who have withdrawn from treatment with a belief of having been cured of HIV/AIDS in church,' said Cissy Ssuna, the counsellor coordinator at Baylor College of Medicine Children's Foundation Uganda, which treats more than 4,000 HIV-infected children, 750 of whom are adolescents.

Contrary to the controversy it has engendered, the Nile river agreement should allow for more equitable water use and minimize potential conflicts between the riparian states, says an analyst. 'The problem with the River Nile is lack of cooperation in water management,' Debay Tadesse, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Addis Ababa, said. 'There is enough [water] for all the riparian states and this agreement opens the way for more equitable management.' The 14 May Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework was signed by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, but was left open for a year. It followed a meeting of water ministers in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda agreed to it.

Development models that harness the potential of specific areas can help solve the problem of regional disparities in social advancement in the world’s poorest countries, according to experts attending a United Nations - convened forum on local development. Participants at the three - day First Global Forum on Local Development, which opened in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, yesterday, stressed the importance of taking a regional or even district or commune - level approach to local development in developing countries.

Around the world, more than 200 million women lack access to basic contraception. Often, these women must travel far from their communities to reach a health facility, only to return home empty handed due to shortages and stock-outs. Family planning is an effective strategy to reduce maternal mortality. The film available through the link provided shows that ongoing challenges in obtaining reproductive health supplies can have devastating consequences for family size, abortion, spacing and delaying pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

Uganda has taken the lead in the fight against the Islamist militants, with more than 4,000 so-called peacekeepers in the African Union force in Mogadishu. More than 90 trainers from 14 European Union countries are currently giving the Somali army a boost at a Ugandan training base.

Ugandan researchers will carry out a series of field trials on some of the major food crops that have been genetically modified (GM), following several recent approvals by the Uganda National Biosafety Committee, despite a lack of clear legislation on commercialising any such products within the country. They will seek to develop both transgenic and conventional maize varieties tolerant to climate change-induced drought; GM cassava resistant to virulent cassava brown streak virus ravaging the starchy root crop across eastern and central Africa; GM bananas with engineered resistance to Xanthomonas bacterial infections; and cotton plants containing both Bt and 'roundup-ready' genes.

In support of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from conflict and disaster areas, Ericsson and Refugees United, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and mobile operator MTN in Uganda, have launched the first project to locate and reconnect refugee and IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) families through the innovative use of mobile phones and internet. The program enables refugees to use mobile phones to register and search for loved ones via an anonymous database.

ARTICLE 19 and four other international freedom of expression organisations are calling on the government of Uganda to respect its international and constitutional obligations to safeguard freedom of expression. The International Freedom of Expression Partnership four - day mission was undertaken in September 2010 to assess the deteriorating freedom of expression situation in the country, in the wake of the killing of two journalists and in the light of forthcoming elections in 2011.

Ugandan authorities should either release a Kenyan human rights activist who is being held on terrorism charges or provide details of the charges, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint letter to the Ugandan government. Al-Amin Kimathi was arrested, along with Kenyan lawyer Mbugua Mureithi, on September 15 after the two travelled from Kenya to Uganda to observe a hearing of six Kenyans charged with terrorism in connection with the July bomb attacks in Kampala, which killed over 76 people who were watching the World Cup final.

Uganda joined the rest of the world to celebrate Access to Information Day with a call on the government to show commitment and implement the Access to Information Act, passed by Parliament five years ago. The activists were also asking the government to either repeal or amend existing laws that are a draw-back on the right of access to information. The say the negative laws include the Oath of Secrecy Act and the Official Secrets Act, whose provisions are at variance with the Access to Information Act and Article 41 of the Constitution.

A controversial Ugandan hydropower project is making its second application for approval under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), drawing criticism from an environmental NGO. California-based International Rivers says the 250MW Bujagali dam project on the Victoria Nile river in Uganda should not be eligible for the CDM and would have gone ahead regardless of approval under the UN mechanism.

Two Kenyan activists working on the cases of suspects charged with terrorism for the July 11, 2010 Kampala bombings have been illegally detained in Uganda and are at risk of abuse, Human Rights Watch has said. Human rights activist Al-Amin Kimathi of the Kenyan Muslim Human Rights Forum and Kenyan lawyer Mbugua Mureithi were arrested on September 15, 2010, when they arrived at Entebbe airport, and taken to the Ugandan police's Rapid Response Unit headquarters in Kireka, Kampala.

The Government of Uganda is violating the Article 12 (5) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples rights, by resorting on mass expulsions of non-nationals (Rwandan Refugees) on the basis of nationality and ethnicity. In addition of refoulement; it is very substantial to note that the ultimatums, verbal abuse, deadlines, anti-Rwandan refugee rhetoric, destruction of crops and huts, restriction of access to humanitarian assistance, bars on granting of refugee status, and starvation are some of tactics that are currently used by the Government of Uganda (GoU) to induce and force us to return to Rwanda.

In absence of evidence, Government Minister of Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Refugees, Prof. Tarsis KABWEGYERE, continues to unfoundedly accuse Rwandan Refugees to be criminals (Reuters, Uganda Defends Deportation of Rwandan Refugees,July 20, 2010). Rwandan refugees are always treated as criminals who are running away from justice. This has resulted into perpetuated ethnic stereotypes and it is gradually becoming an excuse for Ugandan authorities to violate our rights. In the other hand, it has been a pretense always advanced by Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to genocidal massacre Hutu refugees.

As part of their work in Uganda, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Women of Uganda Network made a call for proposals for projects that seek to address the intersection between violence against women and girls, and/or to stop violence against women and girls through the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) during the month of June 2010. Four (4) organisations have been selected as beneficiaries of the small grants and they include Uganda Women Media’s Association, Mahyoro Rural Information Centre and Hope Case Foundation and Isis WICCE. Implementation of the activities is expected to commence September 2010 to June 2011.

The head of the United Nations agency entrusted with defending press freedom has urged Ugandan authorities to launch a full investigation into this week’s murder of a radio news presenter, the second journalist

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the murder of Prime Radio anchorman, Dickson Ssentongo, who was severely beaten by unknown assailants and abandoned to die in a cassava plantation in Mukono District some 35km from the capital Kampala on Monday, 13 September 2010. 'The killing of Dickson Ssentongo signals a serious deterioration of the security of journalists and the Ugandan Government must reassure journalists and the public in general that the perpetrators of this heinous crime will be apprehended and brought to justice very quickly.'

iCON Women and Young People’s Academy (IWYPLA) is pleased to announce its Call for Applications for the “2010 ICON WOMEN IN BUSINESS TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP FELLOWSHIP” programme.

A Darfur rebel group has said it was attacked by Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army guerrillas in Sudan's west. "A group of LRA attacked our forces in Dafak in South Darfur yesterday," Haydar Galucuma Ateem, vice president of the Darfur rebel Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), told Reuters from Qatar-based peace talks.