The Refugee Law Project has protested the way 15,000 Sudanese refugees are being treated in a relocation exercise that started on Monday. Emmanuel Bagenda, an advocacy officer with the Law Project, told a press conference at their offices in Kampala that the way the Government was carrying out the relocation of Kiryandongo refugees to West Nile was in disregard of its obligations to protect them under agreed international standards and conventions. "We are disappointed that the Government could use such high-handed measures to transfer the refugees. The Government should have engaged them in dialogue before embarking on the exercise."

According to the BBC, in a news report last week, Uganda is seeking military assistance from the U.S. in the war in northern Uganda against Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. The war has reportedly resulted in more than 800,000 displaced people over almost 18 years, while more than 20,000 children have been forcibly recruited into the LRA. Human rights and peace groups in Uganda, however, also doubt the wisdom or the potential for success of the Ugandan government's military operations against the rebels, even should it gain additional international military assistance. This posting from the Africa Policy E-Journal contains a first-hand report from Gina Bramucci of AVSI, an Italian NGO that works in northern Uganda, and a press release summarizing the latest Human Rights Watch report on the conflict.

Ugandan insurgents killed 22 civilians and abducted an unknown number at the weekend in the northern and northeastern regions of the country, officials said on Monday. The Lords Resistance Army (LRA) killed eight people on Sunday after marching them from a suburb of the district town of Soroti, about 350km northeast of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, said the army spokesperson.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says it was not informed of an operation to relocate Sudanese refugees from a camp in western Uganda to another one further north, close to the Sudanese border. Scuffles broke out at the Kiryandongo camp in Masindi district in the early hours of Monday morning when the local authorities started forcibly loading the refugees onto trucks.

Uganda’s Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme has increased the numbers of children passing through primary school to such an extent that it risks causing a massive bottleneck in secondary school entrance unless steps are taken to increase capacity, Ugandan ministers have said.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF), has protested the Uganda Law Council's 22 August 2003 ban on lawyers appearing in the media without its permission and called for the measure to be dropped. Law Council Chairman Elijah Wante told the organisation the measure was aimed at preventing lawyers from "misusing the media" and "misleading the public" and that the only public stance permissible was that of the council.

Households with a higher level of education are less likely to be poor, a research project has confirmed. It has also confirmed the finding that returns to education rise with the level of education. The comparative project has shown that there are substantial differences across African economies and that large changes can occur within those economies.

The Representative of the UN Secretary-General on IDPs, Francis Deng, on an official mission to Uganda between August 11-15, found the government’s draft national policy on internal displacement “to be comprehensive and rich in substance” and encouraged its speedy adoption and implementation. But Deng, who visited IDPs residing in camps in Kitgum and Gulu, called the spread of HIV/AIDS “a matter of serious concern” and drew attention to IDPs’ lack of access to water, health, sanitation and education.

Up to 93% of women in Uganda are landless, the parliamentary women's association vice-chairperson, Loice Biira Bwambale, says. Bwambale was recently delivering a paper on land ownership and women rights in Uganda at a workshop organised by the Ugandan women parliamentarians association and the European parliamentarians for Africa. She blamed the discrepancy on negative traditional practices which exclude women in land ownership.

Shaky relations between Uganda and Sudan could be further strained by new accusations that Khartoum is supplying arms to rebels of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The Ugandan Government also claims that LRA leader Joseph Kony has finally crossed back into southern Sudan via the northern Ugandan town of Gulu to acquire more supplies.

Soroti district has no more drugs to treat displaced people who are fleeing LRA rebels in neighbouring districts. The District Director of Health Services in Soroti, Dr Nicholas Okwana, says that he cannot find enough drugs to serve the 130,000 displaced people in Soroti town. He could now suspend Operation Safe Haven (OSH) - the emergency health relief programme for displaced people in the municipality.

"He used to force me to have sex with him. He would beat me and slap me when I refused. I never used a condom with him. When I got pregnant I went for a medical check-up. When I gave birth, and the child had passed away, they told me I was HIV-positive. I cried. The doctor told me, “Wipe your tears, the whole world is sick.”" Harriet Abwoli is just one of many women from diverse regions, ethnic groups, religious backgrounds, and economic classes in Uganda, whose experiences tell one story: that domestic violence has played a critical role in rendering them vulnerable to HIV infection. A 77-page report from Human Rights Watch, entitled "Just Die Quietly: Domestic Violence and Women's Vulnerability to HIV in Uganda", reveals that Ugandan women are becoming infected with HIV, and will eventually die of AIDS, because the state is failing to protect them from domestic violence.

A new amendment to the 1998 Land Act in Uganda takes a small step toward women obtaining land rights. The issue is expected to remain on the national agenda, however, as candidates for president position themselves to gain the women's vote.

As the first beneficiaries of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) complete the primary cycle this year, government has a challenge to take them on to secondary level. It is estimated that this year, 1.6 million children will leave primary education as a result of UPE.

Women in northern Uganda live under fear of rape. The women and girls are victims of the long-running war between government troops and Mr Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army rebels. A new human rights report jointly released in Uganda and Canada appeals to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to appoint a special envoy on the conflict. The report cites rape as a major concern amongst the women.

In African tradition an important visitor is welcomed with drums, dancing and singing. But, says this press release from Health Rights Action Group in Uganda, the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush in Uganda was more likely to be received with mothers wailing for the loss of their children. In this context - and with tears rolling down his cheeks - President Bush should leave Africa with the $3 billion cheque for 2004 to fight AIDS signed and an immediate plan to put more money into the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria.

Aids activists have questioned U.S. President George W. Bush's purported commitment to fighting the pandemic, asking whether his policies were aimed more at helping leading drugs companies. "Is the pharmaceutical industry running your Aids programme? And does it want to run ours too?" the Ugandan Access to Essential Medicines Coalition asked in an open letter to the US leader, a day ahead of his trip to the east African country.

Abductions, torture, recruitment of child soldiers, and other abuses have sharply increased in the past year in northern Uganda due to renewed fighting between Ugandan government forces and rebels, a coalition of national and international organisations said in a report released this week.

The European Union (EU) has allowed the Government to divert US$8m (sh16b) from the European Development Fund (EDF) to finance humanitarian activities in the war-ravaged northern Uganda.

East and Central African civil society organisations on Wednesday called for the suspension of the application of genetic engineering in agriculture. The organisations said genetic engineering would concentrate the means of production in the hands of multi-national companies with patents on the crops and disrupt farming communities.