"The conflict in northern Uganda is unique in the sense that children are not just the main victims, but they are the main targets," says Mads Oyen of the United Nation Children's Fund. Children make up 90 percent of the rebels' forces. On average they spend over two years with the LRA, a movement claiming that it wants to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments. The children are forced to fight on the frontlines, but they also serve as porters and sex slaves.

Ongoing trials of two potential vaginal microbicides against HIV/AIDS at a hospital in Kampala have so far produced promising results, local newspaper Sunday Monitor reported. Vaginal microbicides are substances that a woman can insert before sex in order to inactivate HIV and other sexually transmitted microbes. The microbicides can work in one of three ways - by killing the virus before it enters the body, by preventing it from taking hold once inside the body, or by creating a barrier to stop it from entering the body in the first place, the report said.

Ugandan security forces are torturing supporters of the political opposition and holding them in secret detention amid the government's pursuit of rebels involved in the country's armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The 76-page report, "State of Pain: Torture in Uganda," documents cases of torture committed by military, intelligence and security agents in the government's pursuit of armed rebels. However, politicians challenging the de facto single-party state and the 18-year rule of Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, are often detained, severely beaten and threatened with death by the uncontrolled security apparatus.

Makerere University has engaged consultancy researchers to review the 1.5 affirmative action points scheme introduced in 1990, to enable the university to plan accordingly. According to a circular by Sebastian Ngobi, the academic registrar, the research will weigh the principles of affirmative action to enable the university's Senate to make decisions supported by factual and analytical data. Through the affirmative action scheme 1.5 points are added to the score of each eligible female A' level student applying to join Makerere University.

At least 1,000 Rwandan refugees have returned home from Uganda since January, in a repatriation programme organised by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency reported on Monday. Some 228 of the returnees left Nakivale Camp in the southwestern district of Mbarara in Uganda on Monday, aboard five UNHCR trucks. "The returnees were visibly happy to be back," UNHCR reported. "Many had not seen their home country in at least 10 years, while their children had been born in the settlements and were setting foot in Rwanda for the first time."

United Nations schools in Lira district will be closed, the inspector of schools, Norman Okello, has said. "We are fighting to close down unregistered private schools," he said. Addressing parents, teachers and students at Ngetta Unity College in Lira recently, Okello said the schools were operating without authority from the Ministry of Education and Sports. "We have learnt of some 'brief case' schools that are operating in the municipality without authority from the Ministry of Education and Sports. We are fighting to close all the unregistered schools in the district and later a countrywide operation will be carried out," he said.

Samuel Opong can hardly believe his luck. The 15-year-old was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels last year, forcibly trained to fight and, soon afterwards, forced to fight. In three fierce battles with the Ugandan army last December, he was hit by bullets in the left leg and arm. The rebels had forced him and other recent recruits to attack an army unit near the Sudan border. "I lost so much blood I started fainting, so they left me," he told IRIN at Gulu Support the Children Organisation (Gusco) counselling centre for former LRA abductees. "I woke up from the cold next morning and then [government] soldiers found me."

Located about 20 km north of Gulu town, Pabbo internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp is one of the oldest such settlements in northern Uganda. It is also the largest, currently hosting 60,000 IDPs. "It is 18 years since this camp was created," Uganda's Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness Christine Aporu said, as she gazed over the densely packed expanse of mud and grass huts of which the camp consists. "Many of the children who grew up here have never known anything but camp life," Aporu, who had accompanied top World Food Programme (WFP) officials, including its deputy executive director, Sheila Sisulu, on a visit to the camp last week, added.

Uganda has made great strides against poverty. Many of those judged to be poor at the beginning of the 1990s had escaped poverty by the decade's end. However, a substantial minority were left behind and many others fell into poverty. Against the background of Uganda's impressive economic growth, there has been significant variation in individual experiences of poverty. What factors explain these divergences? What are the drivers, interrupters and maintainers of poverty in Uganda?

To boost electronic commerce and the country's foreign exchange earnings, Uganda is working on legislation that will recognise contracts entered into electronically. Peter Edopu, principal legal officer of the Uganda Law Reform Project, said that the e-commerce law under the E-Transactions, Computer Misuse and Electronic Signatures Bill 2004, the first of its kind in East Africa will recognise electronic signatures and transactions in national and international businesses.

Lack of confidence in Rwanda's Gacaca criminal justice system is holding back more than 20,000 refugees who fled the country 10 years ago from returning home. Gacaca is the traditional justice system that was reactivated by the Rwanda government to cope with the huge numbers of people accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed.

The Ugandan government has announced plans to reduce the number of camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the northern district of Lira and instead concentrate the people in larger camps to minimise their risk of being attacked by rebels. Humanitarian workers, however, fear that the move could worsen the humanitarian situation in the area, owing to the more grim living conditions that are likely to be found in larger camps.

Child soldiers who have served in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group, many of whom were forced to kill or watch other people being killed, may remain traumatised for years after they have been released, according to a new study. A study published by the UK-based scientific journal, the Lancet, on 13 March, has found that over half of the children surveyed - over 300, all of whom were abducted at an average age of 12 - had been seriously beaten, 77 percent had witnessed another person being killed, 39 percent had killed another person and 39 percent had abducted other children. Over one-third of the girls had been raped while 18 percent had given birth while in captivity.

The ideal of gender equality in Uganda was brought closer to realisation recently with a Constitutional Court ruling on the country's Divorce Act. The court struck down ten sections of the act, saying they contravened a clause in the constitution that guaranteed women equal rights to men. The case which led to the ruling was filed by the Uganda Association of Women Lawyers.

Camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-ravaged northern Uganda face critical problems of waste management, inadequate access to safe water, high disease prevalence and widespread dependency on food hand-outs, an NGO reported on Monday. Action Against Hunger, USA, said in a statement that the camps were mostly made up of huts with thatched roofs, called tukuls. Because families cooked inside the huts, fumes from the fires had increased the rates of acute respiratory infections among children.

This paper provides information on the implementation of the collaborative project to improve household food security in rural Ugandan communities affected by HIV/AIDS. The aim of the project is increased collaboration between communities and specialists to improve the ability of households to meet their food security needs. Gender is addressed as a central role in household food security.

An HIV/Aids activist has attacked government for failing to provide Ugandans with anti-retroviral drugs. Maj. Rubaramira Ruranga of the National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/Aids in Uganda said government should not talk about projections it cannot achieve. "It [government] talks about free medication for people with Aids, but where is it?" he asked. "Is it possible?"

The Coalition for Political Accountability to Women (COPAW) is a non-partisan alliance of rights based organisations and individuals committed to political accountability to women and to socio-political transformation in realising good governance in Uganda. COPAW in collaboration with Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) organised a series of meetings last year (2003) to chart out clear and distinct issues to put to political parties and organisations as Uganda transits to pluralism. Some of the issues that prominently featured were (i) Real and Meaningful Democracy; (ii) Integration of the Principle of Affirmative Action; (iii) People-Centred / People-Focused Development; (iv) Commitment to Obligations under International Human Rights Instruments; and (v) Peace and Security. These issues were compiled in a brief memorandum that is now being shared widely for input.

A small kingdom in Uganda says it is suing the United Kingdom for alleged atrocities committed by British soldiers during the colonial period, the BBC said in a report on its website this week. Ernest Kizza, a spokesman for the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom, told the BBC they are seeking $5.5 trillion.

The recent decision by Uganda's President Museveni's to turn to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigations of atrocities by the Lord's Resistance Army has generated a lot of excitement in international human rights circles. Unfortunately, as the February 21 massacre by Joseph Kony's rebels has demonstrated, international prosecution may not be the inspired choice required to stop the carnage.

Judicialisation of conflict is what states do as a substitute for effective action. As a strategic choice for ending conflict, it is also a guaranteed failure. It proved the wrong prescription to the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In 1993, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ostensibly to stop the violence, but in reality to avoid doing anything about the conflict. Every single diplomat at the Security Council knew that what was required was a military solution or negotiated end to the inter-ethnic slaughter.

Rwanda, even more dramatically, demonstrated the timidity of the world in stopping conflicts. The UN had peace-keeping troops on the ground in Rwanda but when blood started to flow, the world decided to cut and run. General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda then, has stated that he could have stopped the genocide with 5,000 good troops and a muscular UN mandate. Instead, he was ordered to leave. The creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was partly a gesture of contrition by states that had retreated to the safety of their borders and abandoned Rwanda to its fate. In both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, resort to a judicial option was a way of appearing to do something without doing anything.

The lessons of these conflicts for Uganda are unfortunate but clear. The relevance of international law during conflict rests on the training, intentions and gun power of the fighters and their command. The individuals responsible for the February 21 massacres have as much knowledge of the Geneva Conventions as they do of brain surgery. President Museveni's invitation to the International Criminal Court therefore, while an important affirmation of individual criminal accountability for grave violations, it skirts the more immediate concern of stopping the atrocities.

The decision is flawed in both timing and effectiveness. Its timing elevates a downstream process of prosecutions to the upstream stage of regulation and cessation of conflict. Prosecutions are usually an after-the-conflict matter. They come after the fog of war has cleared. Commencing prosecution of 'enemies' during conflict imperils truce negotiations and is a disincentive to those who may be willing to surrender. It is why the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia refrained from indicting former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic before and during the Dayton Peace Process. In any event, it is one thing to draw a list of the rebels alleged to have committed atrocities, but a different reality to attempt to collect evidence amidst the war.

The 18-year-old war in northern Uganda has now turned into the classic African 'stale-mate wars', with neither side able to deliver a decisive victory. What Uganda needs at the moment is a strategy of militarily defeating the rebels or negotiating a ceasefire. Given Kony's modus operandi, a negotiated peace settlement may be elusive in the short run.

If the only viable option is military, President Museveni may have to collectivize the security dilemma facing Uganda. The trail of the military supplies to the Lord's Resistance Army needs to be examined to hold to sanction those complicit in the conflict. The African Union Protocol creating a Peace and Security Council has only recently come into effect. Part of its mandate is to stop the atrocities similar to those perpetrated by the Lord's Resistance Army. With the new African Union, African Court of Human Rights and the NEPAD mechanisms, African leaders have pledged to generate solutions to Africa's many problems. The African Union has vowed not to repeat the spectacular failures of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Uganda may be well advised to test this commitment by requesting for assistance in its war against the Kony rebels.

External assistance to Uganda is however bound to be complicated by the country's recent military entanglements in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The five reports by the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, have fingered the Ugandan military for its involvement in illegal exploitation of minerals in the DRC and escalation of the conflict in that country. The tense relations between Uganda and Rwanda following the clashes between their forces in the DRC complicates a regional approach to security.

For Kenya and Tanzania, the insecurity in Uganda is a threat to the anticipated economic recovery of economies already battered by terrorist attacks. It is these two countries, more than any other in the region that must work with Uganda for a solution to the Kony insurgency if an integrated East Africa is to become a reality. In the long term, East African security experts need to re-imagine borders as regional rather than national. Security solutions are however determined by the political policies and choices of leaders. An East African security mechanism is only possible in the context of consensus on values by East African leaders. Internally, the three East African countries are yet to clear their decks of key governance issues. Mobilizing national support for regional peace work in the absence of local security and vibrant structures of domestic accountability is an uphill task.

However, the victims of Kony's war in northern Uganda will not wait for democracy to flourish in East Africa or the International Criminal Court to conduct its investigations. They are not victims of a random robbery or murder. Kony's massacres are a full-blown insurgency devoid of any humanitarian pretensions. If amnesty is what it will take to save lives, it is a choice that Uganda may have to explore in spite of obvious moral qualms. A military victory is more likely to deliver judicial justice to Kony's victims. But it requires political will at different levels and possibly more than the Ugandan military to deliver.

* Recent Pambazuka News articles on Uganda:
- Confronting impunity through the ICC: Is Africa ready and waiting?

* Mutuma Ruteere is a Phd candidate in Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA and a researcher on human rights and humanitarian law.

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