Ten years after international guidelines were established to stamp out the recruitment and use of child soldiers, underage fighters are still actively being recruited in at least 13 countries, including Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.

Uganda has a massive number of IDPs – more than 1.7 million, over 6% of the national population. Although it is one of the few countries with a national IDP policy, ineffective implementation means many IDPs still face security threats, limited access to humanitarian assistance and difficulties in returning home.

Raising Voices is a small international organization based in Kampala, Uganda. We are seeking a dynamic and a committed individual to join our team and be based in Uganda (at least for first year). Responsibilities include both coordination of the GBV Prevention Network and provision of technical support on violence prevention as senior program officer at Raising Voices. For more information please visit Deadline for applications in February 20th, 2007.

UWA-FACE Foundation’s tree planting project in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda, by Chris Lang and Timothy Byakola, documents human rights abuses at Mount Elgon National Park in east Uganda, where the Dutch FACE Foundation has been planting carbon ‘offset’ trees since 1994.

Essential Job Duties/Scope Of Work: Train five local psychosocial supervisors to carry out the ECD programme after your departure, including all the following activities; and manage the day to day activities of the coordinated ECD and Nutrition program in 5 sites.

Leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have said they want to leave southern Sudan - where they have assembled for peacetalks - and return to Uganda. Monday's (15 January 2007) statement comes after the LRA's ended peace talks with Uganda on Friday (12 January 2007).

Madi Okollo Refugee Settlement was created in 2003 and at the time of research had an official population of 7,989 people, 63 percent of whom are below the age of 18. The majority of the refugees in the settlement are Sudanese Acholis, with smaller populations of other Sudanese groups including Latuku, Didinga, Baka, Dinka, and Lafon as well as a handful of Congolese.

Lake Victoria water levels have dropped over the past five years largely due to excessive releases of water through the second dam. The report, compiled by the Water Resources Management Department (WRMD) in the Ministry of Water, reports that since 2004, Lake Victoria is the only big Ugandan lake that has had its water level patterns fluctuate compared to Lakes Albert and Kyoga.

Jinja mayor Mohammed Baswali Kezala has revealed that Asian investors are planning to establish a university in the district. Kezala said the investors are seeking 30 acres of land for the university, adding that municipal authorities were in the process of securing it.

Uganda has begun implementing a free universal secondary education (USE) programme in 700 public and 280 private schools in the first phase of a scheme aimed at making education accessible to all, officials said on Monday (8 January 2007).

What does it take to do business in Uganda? This is the question that Doing Business 2007--a new World Bank and International Finance Corporation study sought to find out. The study compared 175 economies including 23 high-income Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development economies, 45 from Sub-Saharan Africa, 23 from East Asia and the Pacific Region, 28 economies from Europe and Central Asia, 31 from Latin America, 17 from Middle East and North Africa and eight from South Asia.

Thirteen people have been killed in two ambushes in southern Sudan by suspected fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan rebel group currently engaged in peace talks with the government, military officials said on Thursday (4 January 2007).

At least 160 Ugandans were deported from the United Kingdom this year compared to 120 who were returned in 2005. Another 25 Ugandans who sought asylum in the UK were arrested and are in detention. The detainees were arrested under the UK Immigration Act.

Clinical male circumcision has hit a new high in the wake of renewed child kidnaps countrywide and emerging reports that the practice reduces risks of HIV infection. A survey done by Daily Monitor in Kibuli, Mengo, Nsambya and Rubaga Hospitals, shows that male circumcision has increased tremendously in the past few months.

The year 2006 saw the health sector marred by controversies and Uganda slipping off the ladder as a global setter in the HIV/AIDS fight. The Uganda AIDS Commission found that the number of Ugandans living with the disease rose from 5.6% in 2000 to 7.1%, the sixteenth international AIDS Conference in Toronto Canada, heard.

Women are among the most marginalised in our society, says this article in the New Vision. "Since they also tend to be the poorest, getting justice is always a nightmare for them. But a bill passed in December 2006 is set to change this."

New Year celebrations tend to start early in South Africa. Fireworks were going off in the neighbourhood where we were living on the night of December 30, 2006. On New Year's Day we were at lunch at Nigerian journalist Dele Olojede's home in Johannesburg.

At least 800 Congolese who fled recent fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been moved from the DRC-Uganda border to a camp further inland in southwestern Uganda, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has said. 300 of the refugees left Nyakabanda transit site in Kisoso, also in the southwest of Uganda, for the Nakivale Refugee Settlement camp in Isingiro District, 330 km away.

More than 150 people, including woman and children, have been killed and hundreds of others displaced in northeastern Uganda after clashes between government soldiers and armed cattle herders in the past two months, the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF) said on Tuesday (19 December 2006).

Uganda's HIV/AIDS control efforts over the next five years will require between $800 million and $1 billion, the director-general of the country's AIDS Commission, said Wednesday (20 December 2006) at the closure of the National Strategic Plan joint review in Kampala. According to recent research, within the next five years, more than one million people living in Uganda will become HIV-positive and 500,000 will die of AIDS-related illnesses.