Forests and woodlands cover about 24% (or 5 million hectares) of the total land area of Uganda, of which 80% is woodland, 19% moist high forest and 1% commercial plantations. Approximately 30% of such forests and woodlands are gazetted mainly as protection forests directly under various forms of government jurisdiction. The 70% outside the gazetted forest domain exist under various forms of private and customary control.

The Reform Agenda has established a human rights desk to handle reports of torture and harassment of their supporters, an official has said. Naboth Muhairwe, the assistant secretary general in charge of research and policy said this on Sunday while addressing sub county delegates at Kasese catholic social services hall. This follows reports that the group's supporters were being intimidated by government agents.

The health ministry has launched a programme to distribute free anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to people living with AIDS through 26 centres in district and regional referral hospitals across the country. Health Minister Jim Muhwezi told IRIN on Friday that arrangements were being made to expand the distribution outlets to reach more people.

As implied in its provocative title, Where are the girls? by Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana is intended to highlight the specific experiences, needs and capacities of girls in fighting forces, perhaps the least visible of the ‘invisible soldiers’. The authors argue: “At its core, this study’s findings emphasize the implications of seeing girls in fighting forces. It is these implications that provide a vision to help inform and shape future actions.” (p. 119) However, the book is not about girls in isolation. Rather, the authors’ approach is at the same time less categorical and more radical. McKay and Mazurana provide an insightful gender analytic lens to view girls not as a separate, monolithic category for ‘special’ intervention, but rather as members of dynamic communities, whose roles and relationships need to be recognised.

The study also provides a refreshing break from traditional portrayals of girls in conflict as either passive, traumatised, helpless victims or irrational, deviant villains. In contrast to this unhelpful sensationalism, McKay and Mazurana argue that girls and women in fighting forces are actors, with both needs and capabilities, embodying vulnerabilities as well as agency, facing opportunities and challenges. While drawing out common themes, the authors do not gloss over individual differences, but contextualize patterns of, and highlight nuances among, girls’ multiplicity of experiences in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique.

After a global overview of trends of the presence, entry and roles of girls in fighting forces from 1990-2003, the authors focus on the specific experiences of girls in three African conflicts. A brief overview of the situation in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique, as well as rationale for selection of the case studies, provide essential background for understanding girls’ experiences in fighting forces in these contexts. Comparative data and a rich analysis of psycho-social issues and the roles that girls play in the fighting forces form the heart of the study. The authors argue that entire communities must be involved in a holistic approach to reintegration, taking into account shifting social, political, economic and gender contexts. This dynamic process involves both girls adapting to often “disjointed, displaced, reconfigured” (p. 39) communities, and communities recognising and accepting how girls have changed because of their experiences. A thoughtful analysis of the multiple roles and experiences of girls in fighting forces in the three countries challenges monolithic stereotypes of girls as ‘simply’ ‘bush wives’, ‘sex slaves’ or ‘camp followers’. Rather, McKay and Mazurana show how girls’ and women’s productive and reproductive labour is essential to fighting forces and thus argue that conceptual, policy and programmatic approaches must be modified to take girls’ roles seriously.

Drawing on a wide range of secondary sources, as well as primary material collected from hundreds of interviews with girls and practitioners in the field, Where are the Girls? provides a wealth of information and analysis for academics, policy makers and practitioners. The extensive bibliography points to most of the existing literature on the topic, while the methodological appendices document useful research approaches and tools. An index and glossary would have further contributed to the book’s utility as a resource guide. The policy and programming recommendations in each section provide a realistic framework for action. However, these are almost exclusively targeted at the international community; a recognition of the specific interventions, challenges and opportunities of local organisations would have made the study more relevant to a larger audience. These few limitations, however, do not detract from the authors’ goal to render more visible girls in fighting forces. Indeed, McKay and Mazurana surpass this aim by also highlighting, in a refreshingly sensitive, nuanced and contextualized way, the multifaceted nature, causes and consequences of girls’ participation in fighting forces and challenge us to provide a correspondingly holistic, flexible, locally appropriate and gendered response.

* Montreal: Rights and Democracy, 2004. ISBN: 2-922084-74-4

* Reviewed by Christina Clark, Fahamu

Save the Children (USA) is a non profit making organisation whose mission is to bring lasting positive change in the lives of children in need through out the globe. Save the Children Uganda Field Office is currently implementing a five year Food Security Program in Nakasongola district and is seeking to recruit competent professionals.

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) launched a fourth raid within a month on a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northern Uganda on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and burning over 200 huts, the Ugandan army and witnesses said.

Childcare agencies working with former captives of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in war-ravaged northern Uganda are getting overwhelmed by the increasing number of children rescued or escaping from rebel captivity, a relief worker said. Michael Oruni, the coordinator of a programme run by the Christian charity, World Vision, to rehabilitate and reintegrate former child captives into society in the northern region, said the capacity of the childcare centres had been stretched thin.

Political commitment and partnerships with organisations and governments are key to implementing successful HIV/AIDS prevention programs, Ugandan Health Minister Jim Muhwezi said in an interview with the Washington Times. The Ugandan government in 1986 implemented the "ABC" HIV prevention model - Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms - which has helped the country lower its HIV prevalence rate. According to a recent study published in the journal Science, the country's HIV prevalence has dropped 70% since the early 1990s.

ARTICLE 19 Global Campaign for Free Expression has welcomed the Access to Information Bill tabled by the Ugandan Government but signalled that more work is needed to bring it in line with international standards. "On the whole, the Bill represents a positive effort to operationalise the constitutional guarantee of freedom of information. ARTICLE 19 particularly welcomes the provisions on the duty to publish information whenever this is in the public interest, and the protection granted to 'whistleblowers'. At the same time, the Bill still fails to conform fully to international standards on freedom of information."

Sylvia Ssinabulya, an MP in Uganda and a member of the Ugandan Family Planning Association (FPAU) has urged the government to legalize abortion. She said legalizing abortion would give women raped in war zones opportunity to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

The Special Assistant to the Executive Director is a full time position responsible for assisting the Executive Director in the overall direction and day-to-day management of the Institute.

Women have formed a coalition to build and maintain a non-partisan initiative during and after the transition to multipartyism. They resolved to demand 40 to 50 percent representation in Cabinet and at all national levels. However, they ranked aspiration for presidency as the least priority among the nine major areas of concern they identified at the end of a three-day national women's conference. "We have decided to move forward, no turning back, no turning back," they chorused at the end of the conference.

An attack Sunday by rebels in northern Ugandan on a camp for internally displaced persons killed 39 people and drove thousands from the camp, the United Nations said, calling it an "appalling atrocity." Representatives of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNICEF and the World Food Program travelled to Pagak camp on Monday and found that 544 huts had been burned and that one-third of the camp's 11,000 inhabitants had fled. According to Ugandan army spokesman Shaban Bantariza, members of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army struck the camp Sunday evening in a three-pronged attack targeting residents, guards and patrol units.

The premier of Uganda, Mr Apollo Nsibambi, on May13 re-launched the Muljibhai Foundation. The Foundation, a charity organisation registered in Uganda, provides scholarships for scientific and technical education in commerce, agriculture, engineering, medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, legal and information technology.

African ministers in the economic sector, meeting next week in Kampala, Uganda, plan to focus on what Africa can do to become more competitive in global trade. Current trade negotiations, as well as the perennial and unresolved issues of debt and aid, will feature in discussions at the meeting. But documents prepared for the meeting, including a preview of this year's Economic Report on Africa, stress that African countries must also build internal conditions for more competitive and diversified trade. An edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin released this week contains excerpts from the overview of the Economic Report on Africa 2004, released by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in time for the ministerial meeting.

Ntenjeru North MP Kefa Sempangi has submitted a proposal to the Government asking for the transfer of children in the internally displaced people's (IDPs) camps to Kampala until the northern war ends. He said the children should be brought to Kampala to access education, medication and other services that are lacking in the IDP camps.

President Yoweri Museveni has warned lecturers to desist from using strikes as a means to seek redress when they have grievances. In a speech read by premier Apollo Nsibambi at Kyambogo University graduation last week, Museveni said strikes were not an appropriate method of resolving disagreements. "In case of dissatisfaction, I encourage the university council to engage in dialogue with staff. Work together to ensure a win-win situation. I do not encourage strikes," Museveni said.

Blinking my eyes to adjust to the bright African sun as we made our way through traffic from the Entebbe airport to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, I looked out the window and asked, “What are those?”

“Coffins,” the driver replied. “Because of AIDS,” he added, in case it wasn't obvious why the wooden boxes were displayed along the roadside with other goods for sale, things I recognized, like furniture, iron gates, tiny bananas, and the reddest tomatoes I had ever seen. The year was 1995, I was a naïve American grad student, and this was my first introduction to Africa.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic had hit Uganda with a vengeance. The infection rate peaked in the early 1990s, with a national prevalence rate of about 15% in 1991 and more than 30% of the population in some urban areas infected in 1992. It is now estimated that a million Ugandans have died from HIV/AIDS, leaving twice as many orphans behind, and more than one million are currently living with the disease. The wrath of the disease dealt a devastating blow to the country and its development efforts. But there was a growing market for coffins.

Yet, already by 1995, Uganda had distinguished itself as the first country to deal with the epidemic head on. A high level political commitment to action, constructive involvement of civil society including religious authorities, and excellent public information campaigns - among many other factors - all contributed to help the country stem the flow of the epidemic. In 1995, when coffins lined the road, the national prevalence rate was 18.5%. Within a few years, the rate dropped to one third of that number.

One element of Uganda's success in preventing infection has been a public information strategy known as ABC - Abstinence, Be faithful, and use Condoms. The key to the ABC strategy was to promote all three together, recognizing that no one type of behaviour change could work perfectly. The ABC model has been widely recognized internationally, and adapted for use in other countries around the world. The journal Science recently reported that it has been almost as successful as a vaccine in Uganda.

This is not to say that the battle is over. Few people living with HIV/AIDS have adequate access to anti-retroviral therapy that could prolong their lives, permitting them to participate in the workforce and care for their families. An estimated 25,000 babies are born HIV positive each year in Uganda. The situation of children orphaned by AIDS remains dire. Stigma and discrimination are still prevalent despite the best efforts of the government and AIDS advocates. And discrimination continues to make women most vulnerable to the disease.

While Ugandan activists agree that more must be done to treat people living with HIV/AIDS, they continue to stress the importance of prevention. Many analysts caution that it would be ill-advised to rely too heavily on the success of the public information campaign. Some even query whether the ABC strategy was really responsible for the decline in prevalence. A 2003 baseline study on knowledge, attitudes, and behavioural practices found that high-risk behaviour is still very common in Kampala. And recent data indicate that rates of infection could be back on the rise.

There can be no disputing that the scale of the problem in Uganda remains alarming, and that urgent action is required to save lives and prevent the epidemic from further eroding the country's development efforts. Thus, perhaps the most difficult challenge facing Uganda now is to build on the success of the past decade. Even if Uganda and its donors meet their target of providing ARVs to 100,000 people in the next five years, Dr. Coutinho of The Aids Support Organisation predicts twice that number could be newly infected. This is no time for complacency.

Many hope that the US$15 billion President Bush pledged last year for AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean might go a long way towards solving the problem. The money (known as “Bush money” in Ugandan parlance) finally started to reach 14 countries including Uganda last month, from the President's Emergency Fund for HIV/AIDS Relief. But it is not that simple.

In fact, while grateful for all the money available from international donors, many Ugandans I spoke to on a recent visit to the country were already skeptical as the Bush money took so long to start trickling in, and they were not convinced that it would necessarily be put to most effective use.

Organisations such as the US-based Centre for Health and Gender Equity and Physicians for Human Rights have expressed numerous concerns about the Bush administration's strategy for using the money, as spelled out in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief: US Five-Year Global HIV/AIDS Strategy.

For starters, the process of developing the strategy was a closed one and key stakeholders were excluded. What's more, the administration has been widely criticized for following ideological and fundamentalist religious beliefs rather than evidence-based recommendations.

This is perhaps most evident in the strategy's excessive insistence on abstinence only, rather than a holistic ABC approach. The strategy focuses on abstinence for youth and being faithful within marriage, and emphasizes that condoms are only to be made available to and in the 'vicinity of' so-called high risk populations such as prostitutes. Potential funding for B and C approaches is further constrained by the United States Global AIDS Act of 2003, which limits prevention funding to 20% of the money allocated and mandates that one third of this be spent on abstinence-until-marriage strategies.

But this approach runs counter to the fundamental premise underlying the ABC strategy. As Dr. Coutinho explains, even though approximately 60% of his patients do embrace abstinence, they do not always do so perfectly. For example, someone may well remain abstinent for ten months, decide to have sex again, and then return to abstinence. For this and many other reasons, it is crucial to keep the C in the equation.

According to the Centre for Health and Gender Equity, the strategy also fails to guarantee that those most at risk will be provided access to comprehensive sex education information such as complete information on male and female condoms, frank discussions about sexuality, guidance for negotiating safe sex, etc.

Some NGOs in Uganda say they have sensed a rolling back of the space available for public information on AIDS prevention and sexuality, particularly information targeting youth. Though this is not directly tied to the Bush money, they do see a link. For example, much of the Bush money is earmarked for faith-based organisations. While all agree that religious institutions have a crucial role to play, some fear that this could lead to churches taking over much of the work that secular NGOs now do. This is especially worrying given that some churches have strong positions against condoms.

Many Ugandans are also familiar with other Bush administration policies (including domestic policies focusing exclusively on promoting abstinence outside marriage and ignoring or even opposing contraceptive and condom use, as well as the global gag rule). As a result, they fear there may be 'a change in the winds' towards more conservative public health policies informed by evangelical interests.

Numerous other serious concerns have also been raised with respect to the Bush money. One is the failure of the US to contribute its proper share to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Another is the fear that funds will only be available for purchase of name-brand drugs. This will be a decisive factor in how many people receive treatment, as the funds available are finite and name-brand drugs can cost four times more than their generic counterparts.

Even beyond the Bush money and public health policy, Christian Aid recently issued a report decrying a 'dangerous drift' - encouraged by the US and the UK - of diverting aid funds in Uganda and elsewhere to the war on terror. Nearly a quarter of Uganda's social services budget in 2002 went to fund military operations in the North to fight the LRA (which has been added to the US terrorist list). Yet the report also found that the war and militarization of the area is actually contributing to increased spread of HIV in the region.

I recently took the Entebbe-Kampala road again on one of my frequent trips to Africa. My heart sank as soon as we drove out of the airport parking lot, quickly dashing the excitement I felt about returning to Uganda that had peaked during the breathtaking landing on the shores of Lake Victoria.

I confided in my fellow passenger - a Tanzanian law professor on his way to the same meeting I would be attending - how this stretch of road, my first impression of Africa, is branded in my memory together with coffins. Recalling the devastation that poverty and disease had wrought on the country in the mid-1990s, he sympathized. But he reminded me that Uganda had worked hard to slow the impact of the epidemic, and that things are actually much better today. Together, we looked anxiously out the window - not at the emerald green landscape, but at the roadside merchants and their wares. Together, we breathed a sigh of relief when we didn't see any coffins.

Ugandan AIDS advocates continue to work tirelessly to battle the epidemic. For example, Dr. Coutinho has suggested an improvement on the ABC strategy - adding a “D”, for determine and declare, to encourage people to get tested and be open about their status. The international community - including the Bush administration - should continue to rely on evidence, rather than untested strategies motivated by fundamentalist ideology. This may be the best way to keep the coffins off the road until we get to V for vaccine, and Z for zero.

* Sara Rakita is a consultant who travels frequently to Africa.

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Sudanese refugees are on the move in two host countries, Chad and Uganda, because of attacks from their enemies or the fear of such attacks, the United Nations refugee agency said. More than 31,000 Sudanese refugees were displaced from their settlements in northern Uganda because of 30 raids in the last three months by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. Since 6 May, UNHCR said, it has moved 52,444 refugees from the area of the Chadian border with Sudan to camps further inside Chad, while another 7,000 refugees had arrived at the camps on their own in their flight from Sudan's Janjaweed militia, which has committed massacres, rapes, looting and flattening of villages in the western Darfur region of Sudan.

"It was difficult to tell people that I was HIV positive because there wasn't much support," says Gladys, a teacher in her 40s. Even though a million people have died of AIDS in Uganda, and a million more are infected with the virus, attitudes towards the disease haven't changed much in this Central African country in the past two and a half decades. When the AIDS epidemic began in the early 1980s one of the hardest hit countries was Uganda. By the early 1990s, over 18 percent of the population was infected with HIV, and in some areas, the figure was over 30 percent. But Uganda is one of the few countries in Africa that has managed to turn the tide, thanks to the government's openness about the disease and the work being done by local groups across the country. Infection rates have dropped from 18 percent to just over 6 percent.