IRIN Focus on humanitarian issues in 2001 //yearender//

Last year saw growing hope for peace in Uganda's long-suffering insecure regions and the eventual eradication of rebel insurgencies in the north and west. Long-awaited measures to disarm Karamojong pastoralists in the northeast, the steady trickle of returning abductees from Sudan and improvements in relations with Sudan were all positive signs for peace and stability in the East African nation.

Following Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's re-election in March, humanitarian observers looked to the government to take full advantage of security improvements to facilitate the return to their homes of the country's long-term internally displaced population.

After 16 years of instability and sporadic internal conflict in Uganda, 2001 saw political and social gains that reduced the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance from 1.1 million to around 717,000 - a reduction of 35 percent, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in an October situation report.

The decrease was attributable to a number of factors, it said, including the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and their redeployment to peripheral crisis areas in Uganda, as well as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Sudan and discontinuation of its support for the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), in the north, and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the west and southwest.

OCHA also highlighted the beneficial effects of peace initiatives by community leaders and third parties, and the government's declaration of an amnesty for rebels who gave up their fight and surrendered their arms.

These factors, it said, now leave Uganda at a crucial juncture - with room to move forward and consolidate social, economic and political gains, but none for complacency or further lapses into conflict.

Despite some notable improvements, however, some 700,000 refugees, displaced persons and victims of drought remain idle or underemployed in camps without sufficient land, shelter, income or basic services.

Northern IDPs

In the Acholi subregion of northern Uganda (including Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts), many among some 350,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), most of whom were forced into 'protected camps' in 1996 as a result of increased attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are hoping that 2002 will bring sufficiently peaceful conditions to allow their return home.

Improvements in security in the north and increasing isolation of the LRA in recent months had facilitated the spontaneous return of several thousand IDPs to their home areas, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday, 10 January 2002.

"It is happening in a fairly ad hoc manner. It is pretty slow but it is going in the right direction," they said.

The population of one of the largest camps at Pabbo, Gulu District, had fallen by around 5,000 and was now estimated at 41,000 people, sources added.

Improvements in Ugandan-Sudanese relations, including through the exchange of envoys by Kampala and Khartoum, and tighter control of the Sudan-Uganda border, had increased the isolation of the rebels, with more than 50 LRA rebels surrendering in the last two months of 2001, UNOCHA-Uganda reported in December.

"They are degenerating into a rabble, with very little contact with [LRA leader Joseph] Kony in Sudan," humanitarian sources told IRIN.

Despite these security improvements, it would be difficult to eradicate the LRA completely - partly because the international community is opposed to an all-out military campaign against the rebels, many of whom are children or were abducted as children and forced into combat, sources in Uganda warned.

"The conflict will continue at a low-level for months to come," one such person stated.

Led by the self-proclaimed mystic Kony, the LRA has been fighting a guerilla-style war against Ugandan government forces since the late 1980s, ostensibly in a desire to have Uganda ruled according to the ten Commandments of the Bible.

The United States of America in December included the LRA, as well as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) active in western and southwestern Uganda, on its "Terrorist Exclusion List" designed to protect the safety of the country and its citizens under the new US Patriot Act.

War in the west

In western Uganda, some 70,000 IDPs remain in displacement camps as a result of attacks by ADF rebels, who have often killed, abducted and looted from inhabitants of the camps. The rebel movement, operating from the Rwenzori mountains in western Uganda and from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is a combination of fighters from the Tabliq Muslim sect and remnants of the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU).

Following an intensified campaign by the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) against the rebels, as well as the - somewhat limited - promotion of its amnesty offer, the government announced in late November that IDPs in the west could return to their homes in Kabarole, Kasese, Bundibugyo, Kamwenge and Kyenjojo.

"I will no longer countenance the sufferings of Ugandans on account of terrorism by the likes of Kony and the ADF or any other adventurers, be they political or otherwise," President Yoweri Museveni said in his New Year's address to the nation, broadcast on Radio Uganda on 31 December.

Humanitarian sources confirmed that there were good prospects for large-scale IDP returns in the west.

"The war in the west is pretty much won," sources told IRIN. "The number of ADF [fighters] is very, very small. Almost everyone that wants to go home should be able to do so."

The UK-based organisation African Rights in December called on the government to follow up on improved security situation in the west with "substantial commitments aimed at improving social and economic conditions", in order to ensure the region did not remain marginalised and vulnerable to manipulation by rebel elements.

Although the Ugandan government has no clear policy on tackling internal displacement, Museveni said in his end of year address that the security status of the northern and western Uganda would improve enough to allow the IDP camps to be dismantled.

"I would like to assure those Ugandans that are still in those camps that they will be able to go back to their homes this year," he said on Radio Uganda on 31 December.

However, the fragility of peace in Uganda's insecure regions was highlighted on 1 September, when six people were killed during an attack by suspected LRA rebels on a vehicle owned by nongovernmental organisation Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

"We are in a fragile period" in Uganda, OCHA reported in October, adding that a few violent attacks, coupled with unbridled rumour and misinformation could undermine the current lull in insecurity.

Abductees

Better relations with Sudan also facilitated the accelerated return to Uganda of abducted children from southern Sudan, via Khartoum, during last year.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a total of 323 LRA abductees who escaped in southern Sudan during 2000-'01 have become part of a programme of repatriation to Uganda, under the auspices of UNICEF, the International Organisation for Migration and the governments of Uganda and Sudan.

However, nearly 6,000 abducted children remain missing, UNOCHA reported in December.

Karamojong disarmament

The government has made a special effort to clamp down on insecurity in northeast Uganda's Karamoja subregion. On 2 December, Museveni launched a long-awaited disarmament programme which aimed to remove some 40,000 illegal guns from Karamojong pastoralists in the area.

Between 2 December and 29 December, the Karamojong had voluntarily handed in some 7,000 illegal firearms, Museveni stated in his New Year address. In that same speech, he announced that the amnesty period, initially due to last only one month, had been extended until 15 February 2002.

Karamojong 'warriors' have been widely criticised for carrying out armed raids against neighbouring districts in eastern Uganda, most notably in Katakwi District where some 80,000 people have been forced into - and remain in - displacement camps as a result of the raids.

More details at www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18776

Elections

The ascendancy of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) on the political scene was confirmed by Museveni's re-election as president in March 2001 and voters' overwhelming choice of NRM supporters in June's parliamentary polls.

Museveni's March victory - in which he received 69.3 percent of the valid vote - was legally challenged by main rival, Colonel Kizza Besigye, who claimed "massive rigging and irregularities" had discredited the process, and that Uganda had effectively become a dictatorship.

One month after Uganda High Court announced its rejection of his appeal to have the result overturned, Besigye fled Uganda in August, claiming that state security agents had been harassing him since March.

Besigye in July launched a controversial 'Democratic Reform Charter' which contained proposals to amend the Ugandan constitution to ensure the separation of organs of the NRM from organs of the state, and on the rights of political opponents. NRM director of information Ofwono Opondo in August rejected Besigye's proposals as being unrealistic and far-fetched.

Amnesty International in September decried the "growing repression of any form of non-violent opposition to the Ugandan government" following the arrest of Besigye's wife and MP for Mbarara, Winnie Byanyima.

"Since the outcome of the presidential elections, basic internationally recognised freedoms of expression, association and movement have become even more strictly curtailed," it said in a press release on 14 September.

June's parliamentary elections endorsed Uganda's "Movement" political system, with 230 of 282 parliamentarians chosen considered to be sympathetic to Museveni, providing him with a "relatively soft parliament to work with in his final term," the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reported in July.

Museveni is constitutionally obliged to leave office when his current term ends in 2006.

Under Uganda's no-party Movement system, political parties are not allowed to take part in elections, and MPs are officially elected as independents. The Movement, of which every Ugandan adult is ostensibly a member, was introduced by Museveni to avoid the divisiveness he associated with multi-party politics, but has often been criticised by opponents as a de facto one-party system.

The NRM's National Executive Committee (NEC) in mid-December suspended its internal debate on the possible reintroduction of multi-party politics in Uganda, in order "to give a chance to people to submit their views to the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) without bias," the government-owned New Vision newspaper reported.

The NEC also appointed a 22-member think-tank headed by the National Political Commissar (NPC), Dr Crispus Kiyonga, to "find out if there are good grounds for the Movement to revisit the issue of political systems."

The outcome was regarded by analysts as a victory for President Museveni in sidelining those elements of the NRM who are keen to edge Uganda back to multi-party democracy sooner rather than he would wish.

In a further development, the police this week banned a political rally in planned by the opposition Uganda People's Congress (UPC) for Kampala on Saturday, 12 January, saying it contravenes the constitution, the government-owned New Vision reported on Friday.

UPC leaders have vowed to go ahead with it and face arrest if necessary in the name of championing their democratic rights, the report added.

HIV/AIDS

Despite widely praised efforts by the government to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the disease last year overtook malaria as the leading cause of death among adults in Uganda, the Director-General of Uganda Aids Commission, Dr David Kihumoro Apuuli, reported in October.

HIV/AIDS had claimed over 800,000 Ugandan lives so far, with 1.7 million children estimated to have lost one or both parents to AIDS (while they were younger than 15) since the start of the epidemic to the end of 1999, according to statistics from UNAIDS.

Three experimental vaccines against the HIV virus are expected to be tested early in 2002. The vaccines and have been tailored to the virus sub-type prevalent in Uganda, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

"Every day hundreds more Ugandans are infected with HIV," president and chief executive officer of IAVI, Dr Seth Berkley, said when announcing the Ugandan initiative in August.

"We cannot afford to delay the search for an effective vaccine," he added.

Other potential risks identified by OCHA include the withdrawal of Ugandan forces from the conflict in neighbouring DRC, if means of accommodating and employing these soldiers are not given timely attention.

Heightened tension with Rwanda and the need for withdrawal of all Ugandan support from the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) battling the Sudanese government were continuing geo-political causes of uncertainty, it said.

In the west, the general population feels vulnerable and neglected, leaving "an undercurrent of dissatisfaction" which the government needed to address in order to consolidate gains in social security, African Rights reported in December.

OCHA has also highlighted that, in the absence of funding for public welfare and employment, banditry had become "one of the few forms of income available in the peripheral and under-served northern and northeastern regions".

There was a need for "serious commitment towards political accommodation", as well as a joint government, donor and aid community "framework for recovery" for poor and marginalised areas of Uganda, it added.

In addition, while government plans to "decongest" protected villages for IDPs had their merit, safeguards for the displaced were needed, as well as an emphasis on resettlement rather than mere decongestion, OCHA stated.