About 100 primary school teachers in Rubaya and Butanda sub-counties have threatened to down their tools unless the government pays them their salary increment. The teachers said President Yoweri Museveni pledged to increase their salary from Shs130, 000 to 200, 000 effective this financial year, but nothing has been done.

The annual Convention of the Ugandan North American Association is being held between the 3rd and 5th of September in the Sheraton Hotel, Seattle. Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, will be delivering the key note address and other speakers include Congressman Adam Smith of Washington's Ninth District and Jeremy M Goldberg of Project Namuwongo, Zone B. For more information, visit the convention's website.

Education does not end with exile. In fact, it starts in exile for many of the over 65,000 primary school-aged refugee children in northern Uganda. Even after they have been displaced by Uganda's own civil conflict, these refugee kids are given access to free primary education alongside local students.

In its investigation in Northern Uganda, the International Criminal Court must ensure protection for witnesses and victims, Human Rights Watch has said. The court needs to investigate serious crimes committed by all sides to the conflict in order to ensure justice and promote sustainable peace. This follows an announcement by the ICC Office of the Prosecutor that it will initiate an investigation in Uganda. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had referred the situation in Northern Uganda to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in January.

Psychosocial rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for youth who have escaped or were released from the Lord's Resistance Army have been established since 1994 and are reasonably well integrated locally, both with communities and as part of the Government’s overall demobilisation and amnesty programme. In spite of the culture of peace and discourses of forgiveness and reconciliation within recipient communities, there are real tensions around reintegration and reconciliation surrounding the return of ex-abductees.

Hopes within Uganda's opposition that donors will press President Yoweri Museveni not to amend the 1995 constitution to allow him to run for the 2006 presidential election were shattered last week when Western diplomats said they will not interfere with the country's transitional process. However, the diplomats warned that economic and political gains that the country had achieved in the past decade might be lost unless the government handled the transition to the 2006 presidential election well.

They meet every week at a small, government-funded health clinic in Kawempe, the poorest and most crowded suburb of the Ugandan capital. They vary in age, but nearly all are married or widowed. Most contracted HIV from a husband or long-term partner. They are members of the Kawempe Positive Women’s Union (KPWU).

Uganda's director general of health services has directed the country's National Drug Authority to suspend antiretroviral drugs sales on the open market following reports that some doctors have been selling counterfeit drugs to patients, Xinhua News Agency reports. Peter Mugyenyi, director of the country's Joint Clinical Research Centre, last Thursday at a parliamentary committee meeting on HIV/AIDS said that some people have been selling the counterfeit drugs in containers resembling those used to sell authentic antiretrovirals, Uganda's New Vision reports.

Save the Children, Norway

Save the Children, Norway, is seeking applicants for the post of Child Protection Adviser. You will be responsible for identifying and monitoring child protection issues in Northern Uganda as well as designing and advising on the implementation of child protection programmes in the region. The successful candidate will have experience of social welfare and of designing rehabilitation programmes for children associated with armed forces in developing countries.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have opened an investigation into war crimes in northern Uganda, where government forces have been battling an 18-year rebellion by the shadowy Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA is notorious for raiding villages, stealing food and abducting children for use as soldiers, workers and sex slaves (Associated Press, July 29). In February the group struck the Barloonyo camp for internally displaced persons, killing more than 200 people, many of whom were burned alive in their huts.

The incidence of measles among children in Uganda has fallen by over 84%, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report has revealed. The drop is mainly attributed to the massive nationwide immunisation conducted last year, a press release from the WHO office in Kampala said on Wednesday. It says from January to March this year, a cumulative total of 1,606 suspected cases (of measles) were reported from all health centres and hospitals countrywide, showing a significant decline from 10,329 reported in the same time period of 2003."

Members of the African Development Bank (ADB) group have agreed to pursue gender equality as a development issue because continuing inequality between men and women is proving a high cost to the development of the African continent. The bank said poverty on the continent is increasingly taking on a female characteristic, a phenomenon that has been termed as the feminisation of poverty.

Uganda's external debt last month hit an all-time high of $4.3 billion, despite a commitment by the government to reduce the burden, as the effects of the charged political atmosphere created by debate over President Yoweri Museveni's third term and the grant of a federal status to the Buganda kingdom begins to bite. Debt service payments have also risen from $133 billion in 1999/2000 to $172million in the 2002/03 financial year, before reaching the current rate of $180 million, thus making the benefits accruing from the debt relief initiative announced by donors in 1998 negligible.

Young people in northern Uganda are facing increased risks of gender-based violence, recruitment into government military forces, and other human rights abuses due to the continued lack of security and protection, according to a new report by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. "In the absence of adequate government protection, displaced people are seeking alternative means of protection," says Matthew Emry, project manager of the Women’s Commission’s Children and Adolescents Project, and a lead researcher and author of the report. "An estimated 50,000 'night commuters,' most of them children, adolescents and women, leave their homes in rural northern Uganda each night to escape attacks from the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and spend the night in the relative safety of town centers, walking as far as six miles each way."

An official from the Rwandan League for Promotion and Defence of Human Rights has called upon the Rwandan Government to "look to the future and stop being a hostage of Rwanda's tragic past". The official, one of seven who fled to Uganda almost two weeks ago after a parliamentary commission accused them of promoting ethnic division, added: "We need to face our history in order to map out a positive future. The government of Rwanda should try to draw lessons from the country's history...but this will not be possible if they continue to suppress the civil society and the independent press."

The Chairman of Uganda's Electoral Commission (EC), Badru Kiggundu, announced this week that the country still needs the army to conduct free and fair elections. Presenting the EC's policy for 2004/5 to Parliament, the Chairman declared that 'the police remain insufficient to curb electoral violence and malpractice.

President Yoweri Museveni has directed the Army Commander to appoint a special commander to monitor the security of internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in northern Uganda. The Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, told journalists at his residence at Gulu Barracks on Thursday that the commander would ensure security in the camps. He said adequate permanent forces had been deployed in the IDP camps to ensure that the LRA rebels do not loot food and abduct civilians from the camps.

France has decried the rate at which public funds are being embezzled in Uganda and that the corrupt officials are left to get away with it. Speaking during the Bastille Day celebrations, the French Ambassador, Jean-Bernard Thiant, stated that: “Everyone knows that there is corruption...there are very many reports but nothing has been done...the Government should force these people to give back what they steal.”

Linux Solutions, a Uganda-based FOSS (free and open source software) support company has joined forces with SchoolNet Uganda to provide schools in the country with Linux-based thin-client solutions. The technology enables the revival of obsolete hardware, lower running costs and easier maintenance. The director of SchoolNet declared that the technology provides the 'perfect solution' for the roll out of IT to rural schools.

The final decision on whether Buganda should be granted a federal system of governance lies with Parliament, Information Minister Nsaba Buturo has said. Cabinet's rejection of President Yoweri Museveni's proposal to grant federo to Buganda, drew a strong reaction. The Buganda Lukiiko (Parliament) on Monday voted overwhelmingly to team up with Bunyoro Kingdom to fight for a return to federo, which was abolished in the 1960s.