At least five more suspects linked to last Sunday's bombing in Kampala have been arrested bringing the number of suspects in police custody to 12. The police bomb squad was on day four still on its toes as telephone lines were jammed with calls of suspected bombs dumped in several areas, including outside Kampala City.

Uganda has begun “forcibly” deporting hundreds of Rwandans from two southwestern refugee camps, at gunpoint according to one witness, prompting the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to call for a suspension of the operation. Both countries have long tried to rid Uganda of Rwandan refugees who for their part say they do not feel safe going home.

[/img"> The report made a number of recommendations to the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, and to UNHCR, in order to improve protection for this group of refugees. In particular, it stated that the Ugandan government must scrupulously uphold its international and national legal obligations with regard to the protection of refugees and to the truly voluntary nature of any repatriation.

We therefore call for an immediate halt to the current removal process. We also call on the Ugandan government to ensure that any failed asylum seekers are able to exhaust the appeal processes provided for under the Refugees Act, and, where these routes have indeed been exhausted, that the Government follow due process for deportation as provided for under the Citizenship and Immigration Control Act.

For further information or comments, please contact;
Dr. Chris Dolan, Director, Refugee Law Project,
[email][email protected], +256 414235330/ 343556

or

Dismas Nkunda, Co-Director, International Refugee Rights Initiative,
[email][email protected] +256 782310404

Following the success of 'the octopus' in predicting the result of various World Cup matches, Tumusiime K. Deo wonders what role the cephalopod might play in Uganda's elections.

When Macklean Kyomya came to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, at 19, she found work as a lap-dancer in a nightclub and was soon accepting money from clients in exchange for sex. "I enjoyed the feeling of power I had over men; I had a pimp who looked after me so I was never forced to do anything I didn't choose to," she told IRIN/PlusNews. "I was still doing my A-levels, so the money helped pay my way."

In mid-July AIDS experts from around the world will gather for the 18th international AIDS conference. The focus will be on where AIDS is being defeated and where it is re-emerging. Unfortunately, Uganda will be discussed in the second category.

The last of three ceremonies to rebury victims of Rwanda's 1994 genocide who were washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda has taken place. Nearly 11,000 bodies thrown into rivers in Rwanda were recovered from the lake and buried by Ugandan villagers. Their bodies have now all been exhumed from different places and buried at three special memorial sites.

The discovery of oil in western Uganda has prompted a land grab around the oil fields, dispossessing impoverished local communities and providing a potential trigger for conflict, members of parliament from the area have said.

The Rift Valley Institute Great Lakes Course will now take place in Entebbe, Uganda, from 17 to 23 July. Due to security concerns surrounding the elections in Burundi, the course has been moved from the previously announced location in Bujumbura. The syllabus and dates remain unchanged. The Great Lakes course is a residential programme designed for aid workers, peace-keepers, researchers and diplomats.

The International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) and the Refugee Law Project have the pleasure in announcing the launch of a paper on the current situation of Rwandan refugees in Uganda entitled "A Dangerous Impasse: Rwandan Refugees in Uganda". The launch will be held on Monday 28th June 2010 at Hotel Africana starting at 3pm - 5pm.

The Ugandan government will compensate about 10,000 people in the country's northern region, who were maimed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels over two decades, ahead of elections next year. One of the most ruthless rebel groups, the LRA waged a brutal but futile insurgency from their bases in northern Ugandan and southern Sudan to dislodge President Yoweri Museveni and establish a theocracy in the east African country.

Cholera outbreak in Uganda has killed at least 10 people leaving 20 hospitalized in Uganda's Kayunga district, officials said Thursday. The epidemic that broke out June 4 at the Kawongo landing site was due to poor sanitation, Edrisa Musisi, district health officer, said.

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) celebrated 10 years of empowering women and women organizations through the use of ICTs on 1st and 2nd June 2010 at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Uganda. Among the activities to mark the celebrations, was a one week SMS awareness campaign which took place from 24th to 29th May 2010, a two day exhibition and a one day symposium.

Survivors of the brutal conflict that has wracked northern Uganda for two decades, most of them young people, must be helped back on their feet by supporting their efforts to acquire skills that will help them reintegrate into society, a United Nations envoy has said after spending a week in the country. “Armed conflict creates victims, but also survivors whose resilience must be reinforced by government, international organizations and civil society as well as adequate rehabilitation and reintegration programmes,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

A Ugandan draft policy recommending that HIV-positive children be informed of their status by the age of 10 has drawn mixed reactions from health workers. The previous policy required parental consent to tell children under the age of 12, but the new policy allows health workers - with the support of parents and guardians - to disclose HIV status after the child has been prepared and an assessment of their ability to understand and deal with the condition has been made.

President Museveni has said Ugandans are opposed to homosexuality because it is not part of African culture. Speaking to Christians who gathered to mark the Uganda Martyrs Day at the Anglican shrine in Nakiyanja, President Museveni castigated Europeans for imposing what he called western culture onto African countries.

With the first Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) under way in the Ugandan capital Kampala, women are crying out for justice for gender-based violence inflicted upon them during the civil conflict in the country’s north. "Women who were raped, those who were once abducted and have since come back with children, as well as those who have lost property during this conflict are all crying out for some form of justice," says Jane Adong, Legal Officer of the Hague-based Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice (WIGJ).

The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said on 3 June the ICC was assessing information accusing the Ugandan military of war crimes and atrocities committed in the 20-year civil war in the north of the country.

Hundreds of bodies buried in a mudslide in Uganda three months ago have yet to be recovered, the rescue team says. Three villages on the slopes of Mount Elgon, near the eastern town of Bududa, were swept away in mudslide. About 200 people are still unaccounted for, while around 100 bodies have been recovered, officials say.

Uganda’s opposition will boycott national elections next year unless the government reconstitutes the Electoral Commission (EC) to make it impartial, senior opposition officials told Reuters on Thursday. They say the electoral body favoured the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni at the last elections in 2006. The head of state appoints the commission’s seven members.