Nineteen people civilians were killed by insurgents at a refugee camp in northern Uganda, officials of the Kampala government said on Wednesday. According to Apach district commissioner Mary Francis Owor, ”more than 100 rebels attacked Aboko camp, killed 19 people and also abducting several others”.
Incidents of sexual abuse, particularly of children, appear to be on the rise in Uganda. However, this apparent increase has not been matched by a similar rise in prosecutions. Instead, many families are still choosing to settle the cases out of court — despite the effect this could have on abuse victims.
Uganda will receive more than $90-million in Aids funds this year from the United States. But activists fear Washington may be showing too great a preference for abstinence-based programmes in its allocation of these funds — and that alternative prevention efforts such as condom distribution could suffer as a result.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Sunday launched a fund to help nations emerging from conflicts settle their arrears to foreign donors and tap new loans to rebuild their shattered economies. AfDB director Arunma Oteh launched the initial -million fund at a ceremony attended by more than 1 000 delegates.
The Ugandan army claimed on Tuesday that it had killed 54 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters during an air raid on Monday in southern Sudan. Since 2002 the Khartoum government has allowed Ugandan forces to conduct operations against the LRA in parts of southern Sudan.
At least 22 civilians were killed and 11 wounded in an overnight rebel attack on a displaced people’s camp near the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, an aid worker and an army spokesperson said on Monday. ”Many people were either shot or hacked to death,” a Norwegian Refugee Council programme manager said.
More than 1,6-million people driven from their homes during Uganda’s 18-year civil war risk losing their main source of food as international donors grow weary of the conflict, a United Nations food agency official said on Friday. Fund-raising from wealthy nations to pay for the programme has fallen -million short.
Rebel attacks in northern Uganda have forced more than 20 000 refugees to flee their camps in recent weeks, the United Nations refugee agency said Sunday. The rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army have been raiding four camps in Adjumani district to loot food, medicine and other goods since the beginning of April.
Thousands of people displaced by wars in neighbouring Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have at different times poured into Uganda to seek refuge and rebuild their lives. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Uganda is hosting 18 000 refugees from Rwanda and about 171 000 from Sudan.
Eleven civilians and two soldiers were killed when suspected rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ambushed a convoy of vehicles in northwestern Uganda, the army said on Friday. The LRA, at war with the Ugandan government for nearly two decades, is notorious for committing atrocities against civilians.
People with disabilities in Uganda say they have been marginalised for too long. They are now demanding that their basic rights be restored and recognised. Members of the Uganda National Association of the Deaf said the government should commit itself to granting them access to education and employment.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has renewed his appeal to the West to open up its markets to enable Africa to achieve food security. He was speaking to delegates attending an international meeting on food security, organised by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
A Ugandan court has acquitted three journalists charged with endangering national security for reporting that rebels had shot down an army helicopter. Chief Magistrate Frank Othembi ruled on Wednesday in a Kampala court that the government presented ”no evidence” that the story endangered national security.
A Ugandan king is demanding a trillion pounds in compensation from the British monarchy for decimating the population of his kingdom in the late 1890s, a spokesperson for the king said on Thursday. The king also accuses British soldiers of plundering from his land during the British military occupation from 1894 to 1900.
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/ 18 February 2004
”We are going to shout about bride price across Africa and we are going to say ‘no’ to the sale of women,” exclaimed Atuki Turner to a crowded hall at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Turner was speaking at the opening this week of the first international conference on the tradition of bride price.
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/ 17 February 2004
Three years ago John Assimwe knew almost nothing about Africa’s insect life. Like most Ugandans, he was more preoccupied with the tall task of making a living despite the country’s crushing poverty and sparse employment opportunities.
After being unemployed for two years, he discovered that selling rare insects was a means of putting food on the table.
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/ 12 February 2004
Uganda’s Supreme Court highest judges have struck off the country’s statutes a law oppressive to the media, saying it ”puts the press and other media in a dilemma” and determines what they should publish. The ruling comes after editors of the local Monitor newspaper were charged with publishing what the state said was false news.
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/ 7 February 2004
Hail a taxi in New York City, and the odds are that your driver will be a wise-cracking male cabbie who’s unafraid to share his philosophy about life with you. But, do the same in Kampala, and you may just get a sharp female graduate who’s turned to taxi driving as a way of getting ahead in Uganda’s uncertain job market.
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/ 6 February 2004
Twenty people were still missing from a camp for displaced people in northern Uganda’s Lira district on Friday, two days after about 50 people there were killed during an attack by Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, officials said. About 300 LRA fighters attacked Abia camp, near the northern town of Lira, on Wednesday evening.
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/ 6 February 2004
Fierce controversy has erupted over the International Criminal Court (ICC) announcement of a possible probe into war crimes committed by rebels of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the course of the country’s 18-year civil war.
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/ 4 February 2004
The number of people who drowned following a boat accident on Monday on a lake in north-western Uganda has risen to 42 after police retrieved 23 more bodies from the lake’s shorelines on Tuesday evening, a senior police marine officer said. The boat was overloaded with more than 80 people.
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/ 3 February 2004
About 40 people were feared dead on Tuesday after a ferry sank on stormy Lake Albert near Uganda’s border with Congo, a senior police officer said on Tuesday. A boat crammed with about 80 passengers and piles of goods capsized on Monday just south of Panyimur landing site, about 280km northwest of Kampala.
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/ 10 December 2003
It wasn’t the president of Uganda’s most electrifying speech on HIV/Aids. Bits of it were confused; others, platitudinous. But in the midst of his tired ramblings in honour of World Aids Day, President Yoweri Museveni managed to say something that infuriated half his audience and delighted the other half.
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/ 8 December 2003
The Ugandan army has denied reports from local leaders in the country’s troubled northern Lira district that up to 70 bodies from Lord’s Resistance Army attacks have been recovered in the last week. "There is no way that there could be a killing on that scale and we fail to know." said an army spokesperson.
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/ 29 November 2003
Nine people have been killed and an Italian missionary wounded in rebel attacks in northern Uganda in the past two days. An orphaned boy was killed and an Italian missionary travelling with him was injured when Lord’s Resistance Army rebels ambushed the priest’s vehicle in northern Uganda’s Lira district on Friday.
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/ 25 November 2003
Fashion capitals of the world: New York, London, Paris … Kampala? Well, if Santa Anzo has anything to do with this, it’ll only be a matter of time. She is the brains behind the first-ever Uganda Fashion Week, which wrapped up this weekend in the country’s capital. The event, inspired by fashion weeks held elsewhere in the world, attracted 30 exhibitors — of whom all but three were women.
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/ 21 November 2003
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on Tuesday bludgeoned to death nine children they had earlier abducted as well as three others they found in a village in northern Uganda, army sources said. The attacks follow a week of intense LRA operations in the area in which up to 100 civilians have been reported to have been massacred.
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/ 19 November 2003
At least 53 people have been hacked to death by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in northern Uganda’s Lira district, a Roman Catholic priest said on Tuesday. ”Thirteen people were killed in Ngeta, 10 in Ewal, 14 in Akangi and 16 in Angura, all areas in Lira district,” said Roman Catholic missionary Father Sebat Ayele.
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/ 10 November 2003
Rebels in northern Uganda have massacred more than 100 civilians in five consecutive days of raids, the head of the regional government alleged on Monday. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been raiding villages in Lira district daily, and more than 100 bodies have been found between Wednesday and Saturday.
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/ 31 October 2003
After 14 years in exile since the fall of his father’s regime, Taban Amin — the eldest son of Uganda’s infamous former dictator Idi Amin — returned home on Monday to a remarkably warm reception from the Ugandan government. For years Taban Amin had been living in Kinshasa.
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/ 30 October 2003
Ugandan rebels bludgeoned 13 civilians to death and abducted several other people when they raided a village in the north of the country, a member of parliament said on Thursday.
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/ 22 October 2003
Uganda should end its support of armed groups in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, five months after withdrawing its troops from the central African nation, the head of Amnesty International said on Tuesday. The human rights organisation has evidence that Uganda is still supporting at least two tribal militias in the northeastern region of Ituri.