Within the vast literature on decentralisation, there is little attention on one important aspect of decentralisation – namely the creation of new sub-national administrative units. This despite the fact that governments of developing countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam, among many others, have created a slew of new units since the 1990s. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper tries to understand what underlying motives lie behind the creation of new districts in the African country of Uganda and how widely applicable these motives may be in other contexts.

More than 300 Kenyan refugees have returned home from Uganda weeks after fleeing their homeland in the wake of the inter-ethnic violence that followed last year's presidential election in Kenya.

One by one, they come. They talk about the incessant beatings, the water that was poured over their nose and throat until they couldn’t breathe and the bricks that were tied to their testicles. One says a soldier cocked a gun in his mouth and said “Now you’re dead.” Another recounts how a bagful of chopped, fresh red pepper was pulled over his head, how his eyes and skin felt like they were on fire and he couldn’t breathe. A young man says dead bodies were dropped off in his room, and he was ordered to clean off the blood. Right, demonstration of torture in Karamoja.

Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village. She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city's outskirts, collecting and breaking rocks into chips at a local quarry. For every 20-litre jerry can she fills, she earns 100 Ugandan shillings (US$0.06). On a good day, when she is feeling strong and can take the sun beating down on her back as she chips away at the rocks, she takes home about 1,000 Ugandan shillings (US$0.60).

Uganda Telecom has started work on a fiber-optic link from the western town of Mbarara in Uganda to the Rwanda border-crossing point at Katuna - essentially giving a major boost to the long-awaited regional fibre project. When completed in November this year, a significant section of what has come to be known as the East African Backhaul System (EABS) will be in place, giving Uganda end-to-end fiber coverage, the telecommunications news outlet IDG News Service reported on Monday.

Almost 50% of HIV-positive women in Rakai, Uganda are infected with strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) that are associated with a risk of cervical cancer, according to a study published in the online edition of Sexually Transmitted Infections. The study also showed that women who reported symptoms of tuberculosis, shingles or oral thrush, all of which are associated with HIV, had an increased risk of infection with potentially cancer-causing HPV strains.

More than two years after Ugandans went to the first multiparty elections in 26 years, the country’s political parties have continued to defy electoral laws by failing to declare their sources of funding for the February 2006 presidential and parliamentary elections. The Political Parties and Organisations Act 2005, enacted a year before the election to provide electoral guidelines, requires parties that take part in national elections to present audited accounts of the monies spent during the exercise 30 days after election day.

Uganda has suspended the creation of a communications court pending the harmonisation of relevant laws. Minister for Information and Communication Technology Dr Ham Mulira said the establishment of the tribunal has been suspended because of differences over the transfer of the Broadcasting Department to the ICT ministry. He said the Prime Minister had requested his ministry to stay action on transfer of the department pending further consultations.

An overnight fire that destroyed a primary school dormitory in Uganda, killing 19 schoolgirls and two adults, may have been set deliberately, police said on Tuesday. "Preliminary investigations indicate that it was homicide," police Inspector General Kale Kaihura told reporters at the scene.

Josephine Akello had hoped the peace talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) would finally end with rebel leader Joseph Kony signing a peace accord on 10 April. Then she heard that the elusive Kony had failed to show up at a much-publicised signing ceremony due in Ri-Kwangba, near the border between Southern Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/364/47409uga.jpgAs Uganda tries to find peace and justice, Doreen Lwanga grapples with the questions: Is there a price that is just too high? Can there be peace without justice?

It is horrifying that there are certain people in favor of buying peace supposedly to convert warlords into civilians, by giving them either monetary or political to lay down their arms and rejoin the society that they have traumatized and destroyed for decades. Several voices including those who call themselves human rights activists so loudly support reconciliation with rebel groups, and many have created their careers out of “negotiating with rebels” and reconciling with warlords. To me this brings back the question…whose rights matter anyway…in the campaign for peace? Most importantly, how did we get there –buying justice from warlords?

In Uganda where I am from, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under the leadership of Joseph Kony have managed to turn themselves into innocent victims of a ‘greed’ political leader –President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (M7). Many Ugandan political commentators and “peace activists” argue that President M7 sought to score political points when he forwarded a case against Joseph Kony and the LRA senior commanders to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Opponents of this ICC indictment of Kony and his senior commanders argue that it has sabotaged transition to peace in Uganda—particularly in Northern Uganda which is the hardest hit by the war between the LRA rebels and the Uganda government for more than 20 years. But is this allegation really true or is Kony simply scoring apologists pity? A look back into history of the peace process shows that the LRA rebels had not laid down their arms when President M7 referred Kony to the ICC. They were still kidnapping, maiming, abducting, raping and destroying entire livelihoods in Northern Uganda. Now the same group is comfortably pausing as peace spokespersons on behalf of the people of Uganda.

On the BBC Africa Today Podcast of Friday 07 March 2008, Dr. David Matanga, LRA Head of Delegation and Spokesman had this to say, “….Ugandans have said, they do not want the ICC…they want peace now. They do not want to hear Mr. Ocampo (ICC Chief Prosecutor) speaking everytime. He is not Ugandan. We are Ugandans. You think only White justice can work….”

Since when did the LRA start speaking on behalf of Ugandans? Interestingly, overtime the LRA voice on international airwaves is overshadowing that of the elected leader and spokesperson for the people of Uganda –President M7. One wonders whether his silence on the LRA issue proves previous observations; that he forwarded the Kony case to the ICC to score political points. First, President M7 went internationally public to the ICC when he needed international legitimacy for his regime, and now he chooses silence regarding the LRA issue to score national points as a ‘man for peace’.

Fortunately for the LRA, they have a platform larger than the people of Northern Uganda whose livelihoods they have destroyed. I happened to be in Kampala around November 2007 when negotiations between the LRA negotiation team and the Uganda government were taking place. A friend of mine was also participating in closed-door negotiations at Hotel Africana with included several LRA senior officials, officials of the Uganda government and members of civil society organizations. My friend asked if I had a camera to take pictures of them, and thanks to my ‘prying and tourist’ nature I had one with me. The meeting was followed by evening tea with lavish hors d’oeuvres, as is the culture with most of Ugandans large NGO and government meetings held in hotels. For my political mind, it was an opportunity to engage in ‘investigative conversations’ with the LRA team and put out some questions that have bothered me about this LRA peace negotiation.

I paused the question to my friends whether it was really justifiable to spend money on rebels? That the government can use taxpayers’ money to dine, house, transport and maintain the lifestyles of rebels in 5-star hotels around Kampala. Yet the taxpayers can neither get a decent public transport system nor proper sewage disposal in their neighborhoods. Secondly, I was shocked to see people designated as rebels walking around Kampala freely with bodyguards without being arrested by security forces. My naivety has always made me believe that rebels are unwanted people and need to be controlled and prevented from mixing with the civilian public. Even people in Northern Uganda whose lives have been most destroyed do not get this kind of protection but are instead tucked away in squalid internally displaced people’s camps. Joseph Kony can demand mobile phone airtime and the government readily sends it to him. Alternatively, the so-called humanitarian agencies operating in Uganda quickly pick up the tab to facilitate the lavish lives of Kony and his rebel gang in the name of ‘negotiating peace’ for Northern Uganda.

Amazingly my ‘human rights friends’ are comfortable with this modus operandi. Why should we buy peace from Kony and his rebels when we have failed (and objected) to hold them accountable for crimes against humanity, crimes against natural justice or crimes against peace? There is no evidence that buying peace creates peace, a popular international diplomacy game played mostly by the United States. It has not worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan or Somalia, and it will not work with Northern Uganda. On the contrary, buying peace and feeding rebels/paramilitary groups has prolonged wars and destruction in Cambodia, Horn of Africa, Sudan, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others. Already, Kony recently put his foot down and refused to sign the peace deal with the government of Uganda on Thursday April 3 2008 in Juba reportedly because he was sick. Yet he is not ashamed of putting up continued demands for ‘freebies’ at the expense of Ugandans. Since we have taken the lowest moral ground by feeding rebel groups, why not go ahead and ‘sniper their leaders’ as a tool for peaceful transition. It happened to reknown UNITA rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, and now Angola is on the road to peace with many refugees returning home. If not, then we should use the Charles Taylor approach, track down warlords and forward them to international justice. It makes no sense buying peace with mobile phones, airtimes or political positions for those who have destroyed livelihoods and generations in the name of justice for warlords.

*Doreen Lwanga is a PanAfricanist who writes about African security and regionalism.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Throughout his childhood, Gordon Turibamwe, 20, was sickly, suffering from frequent bouts of malaria and chest infections, but his father only told him he was HIV-positive when he was aged 16, something Gordon says caused him serious trauma. "I was so shocked and so angry with my dad for a long time," he told IRIN/PlusNews. "I immediately thought I was going to die, I had very little hope."

Ugandan government negotiators quit peace talks on Friday after Uganda's fugitive rebel commander Joseph Kony delayed signing a final deal. "We are going back to Uganda until we are informed by the chief mediator when the Lord's Resistance Army will be ready to sign," Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said on the remote Sudan-Congo border.

Kenya's Centre for Training and Integrated Research for Development (CETRAD) and NETWAS Uganda are among the four winners in the inaugural nGomobile competition. The winning projects were selected from a pool of over seventy entries that came from Kenya, Uganda, Mexico and Azerbaijan.

A final peace agreement to end two decades of conflict in northern Uganda is expected to be signed on 5 April, but the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) said it would only disarm if indictments issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against its top leadership were deferred.

Uganda's government has banned a workshop for prostitutes scheduled to start on Wednesday in Entebbe. "We don't take any delight at all in the idea that prostitutes are coming together to devise ways of spreading their vice," the ethics minister said.

Admitting to being HIV-positive is a difficult task for anyone, but David Balubenze was faced with some special challenges as the pastor of Deliverance Church Nankandulo, in Kamuli, about 100 kilometers from the capital, Kampala. Balubenze knew he was HIV-positive for a year before he told church elders and it was several more years before he informed his congregation.

Becky Mugisha* had been ill with a hacking cough for three months before she was admitted into one of Kampala’s busiest tuberculosis (TB) wards, but she recognised the symptoms long before that. It was her second bout with the disease. The last time Mugisha had had TB, about a year before, she was put on a sixth-month course of treatment.

In many parts of Uganda, especially rural areas, women's roles have not changed since the first Women's Day a hundred years ago. Women are still the primary caregivers, and they still don't get credit for it, according to Sylvia Tamale, the Dean of Makerere University's Law School, in the capital, Kampala.

Lillian Akwero and her friends lived through some of Uganda's worst violence, fleeing rebel attacks in which their relatives were kidnapped or killed and villages torched. Now that their lives are about making ends meet rather than basic survival, their hope is that a deal to ensure lasting peace will not be wrecked by the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants against rebel leaders for savage atrocities