By Rosebell Kagumire and - -
LIRA, Uganda, Aug 12 2011 (IPS)

Ester Abeja has experienced both physical and emotional atrocities. She was captured by Uganda’s feared rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and was forced to join them. But not before the soldiers made her kill her one-year- old baby girl, by smashing her skull in, and then gang raped her.

Ester Abeja, who was abducted by Lord's Resistance Army says it is important for sexual violence survivors to have a face. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

In Ogur, Lira in northern Uganda, Abeja has come to a temporary medical camp run by Isis-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), a women’s organisation working with women in conflict and post-conflict settings.

The camp is specifically for women with reproductive health complications, which they have mostly sustained from being raped during the almost two decades of war.

For most of the women here it is the first time they have been offered special medical attention since the war ended in 2006, and for many it is the first time they have been treated by a doctor. It is also the first time that many of these women have ever spoken out about the violence they had to endure.

Abeja is one of the many women struggling to survive the horrors of the war. Her home is a few kilometres from Barlonyo, where the LRA massacred over 200 people in a single attack in February 2004.

The LRA fought in the north and north eastern parts of Uganda for 23 years. The war, which forced close to two million people into internally displaced persons camps for decades, was the most brutal that Uganda has faced since independence from Britain in 1962.

Thousands of people died as a result and the war was characterised by its use of child soldiers and the conscription of civilians into the rebel group. The LRA were forced out of the country in 2006 and are currently operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and western South Sudan.

Abeja was captured in 2002. She was a wife and a mother of six children when the LRA abducted her with her youngest daughter and her son.

“When they abducted me I had my one-year-old baby girl and the boy. A few kilometres away from home, they forced me to kill my child,” she says tearfully. “I hit her head on the tree and she died. The rebels immediately began to rape me.”

Abeja can’t remember how many men they were; she says there could have been 10 to 15.

“The group that captured me raped me right after (I killed) my child. They even pushed different objects inside me as they raped me. Others were cutting (me) with machetes as some raped (me),” Abeja says as she shows the scars that remain on her arms and thighs.

She doesn’t know what happened to her son or if he’s still alive.

Abeja was sick for many weeks in the bushes of what is now South Sudan. Once she recovered she had a man waiting to be her ‘husband’. Like many abductees, Abeja had to kill or be killed. In her four years with the LRA she tells IPS she can’t recollect the number of people she was forced to kill, but she puts the number at more than 40.

Abeja was one of the lucky few that escaped. She returned home in 2006 with a boy who is now about five years old.

Since the war ended in 2006, people went back to their original homes and depended on emergency aid.

A recovery and development plan was put in place in 2009 by the Ugandan government but this has not covered the emergency medical needs of the population. Most of the money went into building new blocks of health units and rehabilitating the destroyed ones.

It is not surprising that of the 400 women screened here at the Isis-WICCE medical camp, many are found to have pelvic inflammatory diseases.

Dr. Tom Charles Otim, a lead gynaecologist at the camp, says Abeja has lived with a prolapsed uterus for years now.

Uterine prolapse – the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond – is one of the long-term complications associated with sexual violence.

In Abeja’s case, her uterus is hanging out. But she allows her photo to be taken saying it is important for sexual violence survivors to have a face.

She and 39 other women are referred for further treatment to a regional hospital many kilometres away. She will need surgery, which costs about 200 dollars, to remove her uterus.

Like the many women who were raped during the war, Abeja not only has to live with the physical scars of the rapes but the psychological effects as well. She and women like her have to endure intense stigma from the community.

Her husband rejected her after she returned, and left her to raise their four surviving children and her child from the war.

As Abeja struggles to narrate her story, fighting back the tears she wonders: “Do they think I wanted to be abducted and raped by the rebels? Do they think I wanted to kill my own child?”

Otim tells IPS that women like Abeja need more support than just surgery.

A majority of the women seeking medical treatment at the camp have chronic pelvic pain as a result of pelvic inflammatory infections.

“The infections are high here; because of the war, the women were not able to access medical care early,” says Otim.

“This has had an effect on the women’s sexual lives and the majority of them have painful sex, and sometimes they don’t want to have sex but they have to because their husbands don’t allow (them to refuse).”

Many women who have come to the camp have fertility problems. Otim says pelvic pain takes a long time to cure and the women will need about 40 dollars for more follow-up visits at regional health centres, which are usually more than 40 kms away.

“Women cannot claim to have peace if their reproductive health is still an issue they are trying to contend with and struggle with on a daily basis,” Isis-WICCE’s programme manager Helen Kezie-Nwoha tells IPS.

She says because of the sexual violence behind these reproductive health complications, women in northern Uganda need a specialised programme to provide them with the needed health services.

“Reproductive health issues are not easily spoken about, it is not something women will come out in public and speak about,” Kezie-Nwoha says. But “we have built confidence over years of working with these women; that’s why the women can be able to open up and talk about the wartime rapes.”

She says government needs to rethink its approach in post-conflict northern Uganda by putting human security needs first.

The district health officer in Lira, Nelson Opio, tells IPS that most of the reconstruction in the health sector has largely concentrated on building structures, and cannot address the immediate medical needs of a post-conflict community.

“When war ends, there’s a silent war that has to be fought,” he says. “Politicians here think they will just put up structures so they can say ‘This is what I did during my time’ and ignore people’s real needs.”

Most health centres in the district have no medical officers, while the entire district has only two gynaecologists.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Jul 8 2011 (IPS)

When Valente Inziku’s wife, Jennifer Anguko, went into labour they had decided she would go to the local referral hospital just to ensure a safe delivery.

An elderly woman holds up a poster at the Constitutional Court where the maternal health case was postponed. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

“We attended antenatal clinics and each time they advised us to be near the health center when the delivery time comes. We did just as we were told and when we arrived the services were not provided,” Inziku said.

He had arrived at the hospital after his wife did and found her bleeding. “All the nurses were telling me was I had to clean the blood myself. I had my sister so we cleaned the blood,” said Inziku. “It was purely negligence of the nurses I kept calling them and they would tell us it is not yet the time for her to deliver the baby.”

So Inziku and his sister literally sat down holding his wife as she bled to death. “She died in my arms. She told me: ‘We have children, we have love but all this seems nothing if we have no help.’” Inziku said.

Inziku says the only doctor appeared 12 hours after his wife was admitted. “When the doctor finally arrived he told me it was too late and he asked why the nurses had called him,” Inziku said.

Inziku, a primary school teacher, is now left to look after their three children, all under the age of 10, alone.

Inziku is part of a group that has petitioned the Uganda Constitution Court to pronounce the escalating maternal deaths in Uganda violates the Constitutional rights of Ugandans.

The case was brought to court in March by the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development together with three individuals: Professor Ben Twinomugisha, a lecturer at Makerere University; and two health activists, Rodah Kukkiriza and Inziku.

They want government to address maternal mortality and compensate the families that have lost mothers to negligence or poor services.

In the petition, the activists argue that by not providing the essential services for pregnant women, and many others, the government of Uganda is in violation of the fundamental obligation of the country to uphold the Constitution and defend, protect and promote the right to health and the right to life.

“I am here today because I want the court to know there’s an injustice going on. I have pain in my heart,” said Inziku.

The court was scheduled to hear the petition on Jul. 7 but the case was postponed because they did not have the required quorum of five judges.

Noor Nakibuuka Musisi, the programme coordinator at Centre for Health Human Rights and Development said securing a court declaration would be a great start in getting government to act.

“We want a declaration that the non-provision of essential services in the government facilities is a violation of the right to life,” she said. “The reason many women die is because there are no maternal kits, there’s no blood in hospitals and we have poorly paid health workers not behaving in the most ethical way.”

In June the Ugandan government announced an increase in the health budget for the 2011/12 financial year. It increased from 270 million dollars to 412 million this year.

However, Francis Runumi, the commissioner of health services and planning at the ministry of health said most of the budget was going to infrastructure and would not address the human resource crisis that has contributed to maternal mortality figures.

Still activists question the political commitment and health sector accountability. Recently government spent 760 million dollars on fighter jets and other defense equipment, which many question as a priority for Ugandans.

Robinah Kaitiritimba, the executive director of the Uganda National Health Consumers Organisation, part of the coalition that brought the case to court, said Ugandans must fight for their rights.

“There are no rights which are given on a silver platter, we must continue to fight and ensure our government responds to the cries of mothers and families.”

Maternal death in Uganda has remained high over years, every day at least 16 women die in childbirth. Uganda’s maternal mortality figures are at 435 deaths of every 100,000 live births, which translate to 6,000 deaths annually. Also child mortality remains high with infant mortality rate at 78 per 1000 births.

Most of the maternal deaths in Uganda are preventable and mainly caused by the massive shortage of trained and motivated professional health workers to attend births, lack of access to emergency obstetric care for responding to emergencies, lack of access to quality antenatal care, and lack of access to family planning services.

The gap in access to life-saving HIV treatment and malaria prevention and treatment are also major causes of maternal deaths.

Excerpt:

Heavy rainfall means that over 500,000 people living in mountainous areas in Uganda need to be relocated as they live in areas at risk to landslides.

In 2010 over 300 people died on the slopes of Mount Elgon, eastern Uganda after days of heavy rains led to landslides on the mountain. Thousands more were displaced. This week the Uganda Red Cross Society warned that more landslides are looming in the Elgon area, placing thousands more at risk and in need of relocation.

The displacement of people due to climate-related disasters has not been just a local issue. Tens of millions of people around the world have been displaced by climate-related disasters over the last two years.

The challenge to come up with a new guiding framework on how to protect millions facing environmental disasters has been the subject of discussion among international agencies at the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century, which ran from June 6 to 7 in Oslo. It is the first global event to bring together environmental and migration specialists to explore the displacement dimension of climate change.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said there is a need to find new measures of protecting those displaced within and across borders.

This comes after a report titled ‘Displacement due to natural hazard-induced disasters’, released on June 6 by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, found that more than 42 million people were displaced in 2010 and 90 percent of these were victims of climate-related disasters. Of the 42 million plus, four percent of the displacement happened in Africa and 77 percent in Asia.

Guterres said that while much of the displacement is largely internal and required governments to carry out their primary responsibility, he warned that increasing numbers of people will be displaced across borders and may be unable to return home.

Those displaced by climate-induced disasters across borders lack protection because they do not qualify for refugee status under the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. To address this, Guterres proposed the development of a global guiding framework. He said such a framework should contain arrangements for “temporary or interim protection for people who flee natural disasters.” He also suggested that relevant existing treaties could be invoked to address the problem.

Guterres urged the international community to switch from the emergency-mode response to natural disasters if they are to help countries adapt to climate changes.

“Traditionally the international community has responded to disasters and displacement in emergency mode, establishing camps, distributing food and water, building schools and clinics, the billions of dollars spent on relief in recent decades have evidently not led to the sustainable strengthening of national and local capacities,” he said. “National adaptation plans should take full account of the linkage between climate change and human mobility.”

He explained that the UNHCR has refused to embrace the new terminology of climate refugees or environmental refugees fearing this will complicate and confuse the protection of victims of persecution and armed conflicts under the 1951 Refugees Convention.

He warned that reaching a new international instrument that could protect many displaced by environmental factors could lead to hostility towards migration from host countries as it would increase their responsibility.

“In the current context it will not be easy to establish a binding new international instrument relating to rights of such people. Xenophobia is already widespread, fuelled in many instances by populist politicians,” he said.

Kenya’s commissioner for Refugee Affairs Peter Kusimba said the country needed to address climate- driven migration, which has affected northern Kenya.

Northern Kenya has been host to Somali refugees for the last 20 years and Kusimba says that the communities in that area need a lot of support to adapt to the demographic changes and its impact on the environment.

“We have a ministry for northern Kenya and we are addressing the environmental issues. The local population have knowledge of environmentals and seasonal changes. We need to enhance this and support them to survive the increasingly harsh droughts,” he said.

Kelly David, the head of the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Southern and Eastern Africa said lack of data made it difficult for governments to respond to climate-induced migration.

“There’s lack of data of the movement of people in the region who are pushed by climate changes and this is in part due to conflicts. Most refugees from the horn of Africa are simply taken into neighbouring countries because of the war,” said David, “this lack of data makes regional governments not respond effectively to climate-ridden migration.”

David said that many people were increasingly migrating from east Africa and the horn of Africa to southern Africa due to prolonged droughts. David indicated that southern African governments have tightened their border controls, which is not a solution as people look for alternative routes to get in.

“We have seen build up in northern Mozambique of Ethiopians and Somalis who travel down the coast by boat and then walk inland,” she said.

The Cancun adaptation framework achieved at the 2010 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) recognised the increasing challenge of climate-induced migrations both internally and across borders. The adaption framework called on parties to “enhance action on adaptation taking… measures to enhance understanding coordination and cooperation with regard to climate induced displacement, migration and planned relocation where appropriate at national, regional and international levels.”

However, the framework lacks the specifics on how the displaced will be protected.

On Feb. 19, the morning after Uganda’s presidential elections, Michael Muhamuza called home and spoke to his cousin and his brother; a regular check-in with the family.

Ugandan soldier with AMISOM Credit: TS/IRIN

The 25-year-old was calling from Mogadishu, where he was part of the Ugandan contingent deployed under the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

“He would call at least twice a week,” said Mwijukye Mugisha, his older brother. “That day he called early in the morning as we were milking the cattle. He told us, please pray for me, anything can happen any time here in Somalia.”

That was the last time the family heard from Muhamuza, a private in the Uganda People’s Defense Forces, registered as No. R/A 214782. A day after the phone call, the family heard on the radio that an unknown number of soldiers serving with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) had been killed in the Somali capital.

Peacekeeping operations

The mission has not prospered. Four years on, Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the militant Islamist groups opposed to AMISOM and the TFG, have consolidated control over much of south-central Somalia and parts of the capital.

Al-Shabaab has not only bottled the transitional government in a small part of Mogadishu, regularly shelling AMISOM positions and mounting attacks on government officials, it fought a separate Ethiopian force to a standstill, ultimately driving it out of the country in early 2009. In July 2010, Al-Shabaab further demonstrated its power with a pair of deadly bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, killing 75 and injuring scores more.

Ej Hogendoorn, Horn of Africa Project Director for the International Crisis Group, told IPS that Ugandan and Burundian troops are “in a catch-22″. The ICG is a non-profit organisation that works to resolve and prevent conflict; in February it published a report that argued the TFG is too corrupt and inept to ever govern Somalia.

Hogendoorn says the transitional government has failed to put forward a vision for the country, build up its own armed forces or even counter Al-Shabaab’s characterisation of AMISOM as foreign occupiers.

It’s a bad set of choices they have got on their plate… AMISOM could expand its presence in Mogadishu – and in the battle [beginning Feb. 19], that’s what they were up to,” he says. “It is by far the most capable force in Mogadishu. But as it expands its security perimeter, it exposes its troops to Al-Shabaab which explains why they suffered most casualties.”

Two weeks ago, the AU mission launched an offensive against Al-Shabaab in Mogadishu. AMISOM’s commander, Major General Nathan Mugisha, told a Mar. 5 press conference in Nairobi that AU forces had captured significant new territory in the capital, including retaking the former Ministry of Defence building and seizing trenches the Islamists used to resupply their front lines.

He declined to give official figures for casualties on either side, but according to the Associated Press, unnamed diplomats in Nairobi said that 53 peacekeepers – mostly Burundian – died in the offensive.

Lacking a strategy

Combined with undetermined civilian casualties, the deaths of so many peacekeepers in the space of a few days – the Ugandan military had lost 37 soldiers in the previous four years – take the shine off any gains.

Recent refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch in northern Kenya describe indiscriminate violence against civilians by both Al-Shabaab and AMISOM, especially in intensified fighting since the bombings in Uganda last year.

Since then, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been drumming up support for an increase in troop strength. Along with other leaders in the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in Kampala, he proposed AMISOM’s mandate be shifted from peacekeeping to more aggressive peace enforcement – this was rejected by the United Nations Security Council.

Hogendoorn doubts that a military offensive can succeed without a matching political strategy. The ICG report warns that the TFG’s failure to make alliances with other groups is a dangerous sign. The transitional government gets along with neither local authorities in places that are successfully running peaceful areas in the north and centre of the country like Xeeb or Puntland, nor with clans in the south and centre that could be natural allies.

The status quo is untenable, says Hogendoorn. “I should mention that Al-Shabaab is not stupid. They realise they have time on their hands. They have tried to increase the price of [maintaining] UPDF and Burundian forces through inflicting as many casualties as possible, and of course with the Kampala bombings. They would like to force AMISOM to withdraw.”

Maintaining Uganda’s involvement

News about Ugandan casualties receives little media attention.

The war in Somalia barely featured in Uganda’s recent presidential elections. While the opposition called for a withdrawal after the bombings last year, they and most of the public have since fallen in line with the government’s argument that abandoning the mission could further destabilise Somalia and pose a terror threat to Uganda. The government usually frames the troop deployment as necessary because the AU and the U.N. want them there.

But it’s people like Muhamuza and his grieving family who are paying the full price for an incomplete strategy. He only joined the army a year and a half ago, spending a year in training before his posting to Mogadishu.

“I had objected to him joining the army,” his brother told IPS. “In fact he left home stealthily and joined. When he came to tell me he was to be deployed in Somalia, we had fears.”

More operations like the February offensive could sharply increase the casualties, and turn a spotlight on how the mission is being handled and undermine support in countries contributing troops.

For now, Private Michael Muhamuza’s family faces holding a funeral without a body. The AU mission fights on towards a hazy objective. Somalia continues without a government worthy of the name.

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Mar 5 2011 (IPS)

The four-year old African Union Mission in Somalia is fighting a desperate defensive action in support of a transitional government that is “corrupt and inept”, according to the International Crisis Group

Internally displaced Somalis outside Mogadishu. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

As many as 50 soldiers belonging to AMISOM were killed in fighting at the end of February. AMISOM attacked Al-Shabaab, the Islamist group that controls many parts of Mogadishu as well as most of south and central Somalia, in a bid to expand the Transitional Federal Government’s influence and better protect its own bases.

But Ej Hogendoorn, Horn of Africa Project Director for ICG, says the mission’s real problem is the weakness of the administration it is in Somalia to protect.

Q: Uganda was the first country to deploy troops in Somalia in 2007. How is it possible that four years down the road, AMISOM hasn’t figured out what works and what doesn’t? A: Part of the problem is the Peace and Security mandate from the African Union is to support the transitional institutions. This mandate is constraining on the part of the troops in terms of what they can really accomplish.

Everyone thought that President Sheik Sharif was elected [head of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in January 2009], that he would be a credible president and do much more to reach out to other groups in Somalia. But his administration has not done much.

A number of people in the AU who we have talked with, agree with our conclusions on the mandate but the question would be how will a new mandate be implemented. And whether the AU agrees to a new mandate to support groups beyond the weak government of Somalia, it remains to be seen.

Q: The recent report published by the International Crisis Group indicates that Somalia’s TFG, which the African Union Mission (AMISOM) backs, is too corrupt and inept to bring meaningful peace to Somalia. Who can bring order? A: The TFG will not change unless it is forced. Our report sends strong signals to the TFG that if it doesn’t change, the international community should stop supporting it. The international community and AMISOM should be supporting local administrations in central and southern Somalia who are actually the ones providing services and security to the people.

So far the international interventions and attention have been geared towards the TFG.

Our report shows that the TFG has squandered the goodwill and support it received and achieved little of significance in the two years it has been in office.

Q: Do you think continued blanket support for a corrupt and inefficient government has alienated AMISOM troops from Somali civilians? A: The situation is more complex than that but that is very true.

AMISOM has been painted as a foreign occupier, as a foreign force not good for Somalia’s future. The TFG has done such a poor job to dispel this view. It has not explained to the people of Somalia the AU’s role in Mogadishu.

To some degree, the presence of AMISOM has had a reverse impact on security sector reform in Somalia. The reason the troops are there is to protect the TFG and this takes pressure off the government to actually develop and stand by itself.

The [internationally-backed] Security Sector Reform has been a failure; it is not even a top priority for this government.

Q: What achievements can one point to on the side of AMISOM in the last four years? A: Al-Shabaab has not taken the whole of Mogadishu. If it wasn’t for the AMISOM the TFG would have fallen long time ago.

The TFG has failed to act as an effective government. For the last two years AU mission has been stuck in a catch 22.

AMISOM was hoping the TFG would be more effective but the TFG argues we can’t be effective until we have more territory but it has failed to reach out to other groups and thus can’t have more territory.

Q: Would that explain the battles for more territory in Somalia in the second half of February, which claimed the lives of over 50 soldiers – many of whose bodies are still in the hands of Al-Shabaab? A: You remember AMISOM has been protecting the Somali government in a small area in Mogadishu which has allowed Al-Shabaab enough room to attack and even send mortars to the AMISOM bases.

Things have become very difficult for the troops in terms of tactical perspective. It’s a bad set of choices they have got on their plate.

They decided to expand their security perimeter. As we see it, AMISOM could expand its presence in Mogadishu and the battle last week [beginning Feb 19] that’s what they were up to. It is by far the most capable force in Mogadishu.

About a year ago, the big problems was mortar shells reaching the compound of the AMISOM base and as the security perimeter has been expanded it becomes more difficult to protect troops. But as it expands its security perimeter, it exposes its troops to Al-Shabaab which explains why they suffered casualties in last week’s battle.

As AMISOM expands to other parts of Mogadishu, the TFG should provide support to those AMISOM soldiers but the TFG hasn’t.

AMISOM has tried alliances of convenience with some of the militia groups that are not supportive of Al-Shabaab to expand their presence but the cost is that these are not government forces, these are private militia groups.

Q: Many in Uganda – especially those who have lost their sons or daughters – question what the mission can deliver to Somalia . What would happen if Uganda and Burundi withdrew their 8,000 soldiers? A: There are two scenarios if the AMISOM withdrew from Somalia. First and most likely Al-Shabaab would defeat the TFG and take control of the whole of south and central Somalia to be able to set up training bases and expand their operations well beyond Somalia. They may even be able to expand to the north and north east and this would be a problem because then they could effectively launch their terrorism.

The second scenario in case of AMISOM going would be the TFG would be defeated but then Al-Shabaab itself would fail to govern Somalia and then it would all fall back into civil war. This would enable other neighbouring countries like Ethiopia to come back to being directly involved which would in turn make Somalia more radicalised.

Q: So what will happen if the AU doesn’t change its current mandate? A: I do hope the mandate of AMISOM is revised. The current status quo is unacceptable and if the mandate doesn’t change and the TFG doesn’t reform, Uganda and Burundi will be stuck in a quagmire.

I should mention that Al-Shabaab is not stupid. They realise they have time on their hands. They have tried to increase the price of UPDF and Burundian forces face through inflicting as many casualties as possible and of course with the Kampala bombings, they would like to force AMISOM to withdraw.

This is happening as we lack serious discussions on whether the TFG is the only partner in Somalia that AMISOM and the international community can work with.

There are groups like like Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a which AMISOM can work with efficiently. AMISOM must coordinate with all these groups instead of focusing on a European-style of central governance based in Mogadishu, which clearly hasn’t worked.

Currently Al-Shabaab is not working with these groups, so to concentrate their support on a corrupt government means they will not deliver peace to Somalia any time soon.

Excerpt:

John Garang, the revered late leader of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement, once said that women are the “the poorest of the poor and the marginalised of the marginalised”. As the reality of an independent South Sudan approaches, the region’s women have vowed they will not remain second class citizens.

South Sudanese expatriate voting in Kampala, Uganda. Credit: James Siya/IPS

Margaret Michael Modi, the head of women’s affairs in Central Equatoria State, cast her vote on the first day.

“The first day (of the vote) we did not sleep. I went to the polling station and women were crying as they cast their vote,” she told IPS over the phone from the southern capital, Juba.

“For us the separation will be liberation. For so long, we were subjected to Islamic laws which limited our freedom in most ways, and coupled with the traditional values of the south, [women] remained at the bottom of society.”

Like many others, Modi expects that in an independent South Sudan, women will be in a better position to challenge limits on their freedom rights.

Mary Nawai Martin, a member of south Sudan’s Legislative Assembly from Ibba County in Western Equatoria State, is optimistic that separation will bring in a new era of respect for women’s rights.

Gender-based violence

“Women are eager for separation. There’s no woman I have met who didn’t say they voted for the separation. During the rule by the north, women had the least rights, they were the worst victims of the war,” she said.

“Sexual violence took place and women are still living with trauma. So for us we see this separation as our first step to freedom and bringing dignity and respect to women of south Sudan.”

Gender-based violence has continued since the 2005 peace agreement. Women in Western Equatoria State have been vulnerable to a new threat from the Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army.

And closer to home, South Sudanese women face high levels of domestic violence, as well as early and forced marriages. Women are disadvantaged by cultural norms such as the paying of dowry and the practice of handing a girl child over to a bereaved family as compensation for murder.

Enforcing rights

Analysis by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), highlights the fact that women in South Sudan lack access to justice on matters of sexual violations and reproductive rights, divorce and child custody.

“Over 90 percent of day-to-day criminal and civil cases are executed under customary law, which is largely not only inconsistent with international human rights laws, but also favor men,” the report reads.

These kinds of inequalities will need to be among the urgent priorities of a new state.

South Sudan has already developed a new interim constitution which spells out a Bill of Rights and acknowledges the right to equal treatment for both men and women. However putting such laws into practice in a country whose justice system is almost non-existent is a huge challenge.

“Women’s rights – especially protection of women from sexual violence and rehabilitation of those who suffered in the war – will need a lot of attention,” says Nawai.

“With the war, we didn’t have much time to push for other rights. Being alive was what mattered. We don’t expect the government to deliver all this there and then but we will be expecting improved efforts.”

By Rosebell Kagumire
CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 3 2010 (IPS)

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is moving to support its member countries to tap into benefits from the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) framework.

Nchisi Forest Reserve, Malawi Credit: Thomas Wagner/Wikicommons

Since 1990, Southern Africa has witnessed high rates of deforestation contributing approximately a third of the forested area lost in Africa over the past twenty years. By its own calculations, the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) is responsible for roughly half of biomass carbon losses due to deforestation on the African continent.

The major drivers of deforestation have been identified as the expansion of agriculture, shifting cultivation and unregulated logging. All these are connected to high population growth, persistent poverty, increased energy demand and weak regulation and management of forests.

SADC has come up with a regional plan to help member countries deal with deforestation.

“The purpose our REDD Programme is to improve the capacity of SADC member states to manage and benefit from their national REDD programmes and also pool resources together to collaborate on REDD+ issues in which regional approaches make sense and are more cost efficient than those that can be attained purely by individual national actions,” said Nyambe H. Nyambe from SADC’s Natural Resources Management Unit.

The idea behind REDD and its expanded cousin REDD+ (covering conservation and sustainable management of forests) is that slowing and reversing the destruction of forests (in developing countries) will be rewarded with carbon finance (originating in developed countries). This money will provide incentives to protect carbon-storing trees and thus reduce emissions.

SADC’s REDD programme is putting in place systems to monitor forests and assess initial carbon stocks in the region as well as enable periodic carbon and greenhouse gas accounting.

Nyambe said the secretariat will also assist member states to obtain data used to estimate historic reference emissions levels from deforestation and forest degradation.

Many SADC members face similar challenges in implementing the REDD+ framework that is taking shape in negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Illegal logging for timber or fuel takes place across several countries; preventing this requires coordinated interventions.

Along with other developing countries, SADC states are concerned over the elaboration of the funding mechanisms for REDD, including ensuring they can acquire the technology needed to credibly assess how much carbon is stored in their forests.

Proposals for where REDD funding should come from range from requiring contributions – additional to existing aid budgets – from rich countries to a UNFCCC fund set up for this purpose, to a straightforward tax on all carbon emissions above an agreed-on allowance, to entirely market-driven purchases of carbon offsets from forest conservation projects and a mixed bouquet of options in between.

There are also important differences of opinion over who would administer and distribute funds – again covering the spectrum from a market-based system with buyers seeking (credible) carbon credits at the best available price to a fund administered by the World Bank or a regional institution such as the African Development Bank.

SADC negotiators say that private carbon markets alone will not be able to generate sufficient resources to protect and enhance forests; they also doubt the markets can effectively assign carbon funds to where they are most needed.

According to Dr Promode Kant of the Institute of Green Economy, developed countries supporting a market mechanism claim that it would be efficient, effective and enhance equity while having lower administrative costs and providing protection against the risks of policy and governance failures in developing countries.

“There is no doubt that a market mechanism is more efficient than government-administered programs but it is difficult to accept their claim that market would either lead to greater equity or effectiveness,” Kant says,

“In the case of REDD… the buyers are very few, while producers abound. A market, when it does come into existence, would be tilted against the producers in the developing world from the beginning because it is essentially the developed world, the buyers, who would set the market rules.”

Whatever form of funding is finally settled on, SADC will be looking to put up a regional muscle to get its members to secure these funds.

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Cancún.)

Excerpt:

Uganda has lost more than two million hectares of forest since 1990, mostly converted to farmland by a growing population of smallholders. Carbon finance through the REDD programme is often presented as one way to arrest this destruction, but only if the benefits clearly translate to the grassroots.

Uganda’s Mabira Forest. Credit: S A Perez/Wikicommons

Almost a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide comes from the destruction of forests – second only to the energy sector. The idea behind REDD – reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – is to give carbon stored in forests a financial value; financing the protection of forests in developing countries like Uganda with money raised from selling carbon stored in those trees to polluters in the developed world.

Finalising details is expected to be one of the major tasks of the U.N. Climate Conference taking place in Cancun, Mexico beginning on Nov. 29. One of the many challenges in actually implementing REDD – now REDD+, which extends the concept to conservation and sustainable management of forests – is the meaningful involvement of forest-dependent people.

Privately-held forest

More than two-thirds of Uganda’s forests are on private land, controlled by individual small-scale farmers or held under communal title. Xavier Mugumya, a team leader with the National Forestry Authority’s (NFA) Carbon Portfolio Development Programme told IPS the preservation of these privately-held forests must be a top priority.

“We have to face the reality that most forests are owned by individuals and communities and for REDD to succeed there must be well spelt-out mechanisms to bring in more incentives to these people to conserve the forests,” said Mugumya.

These wooded lands are supposed to be overseen by District Forest Services but the DFS’s powers are largely limited to issuing permits for commercial activities.

“The current land use policy leaves most decisions to individuals,” Mugumya explained. “The government can only manage [things] through the issue of permits in cases of conversion of trees into products like timber, but the conversion of forest into agricultural land is up to the individual and this has been responsible for the most loss of the forest cover.”

David Kureeba, a member of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE) agrees.

“The land use policy makes any intervention for private forests difficult,” he said, adding that existing parks and forest reserves have failed to make conservation attractive.

Policy reform proceeding slowly

Mugumya is also Uganda’s REDD negotiator, and he is involved with developing what’s called a Readiness Preparation Proposal. The R-PP is part of a process – supported by $200,000 from the World Bank – that sets out how the main drivers of deforestation will be countered in a REDD scheme; setting out budgets, regulations, monitoring systems, and guidelines for community involvement.

The first draft fell short of the mark.

“[Uganda] came up with a proposal that was found unsatisfactory by the World Bank and we have gone back to bring out the concerns and needs of forest-dependent people whom this mechanism will either benefit or not depending on the implementation,” said Kureeba.

Communities who will be directly affected by REDD were not adequately involved in drafting the proposal. Uganda has received a further $185,000 from the Norwegian government to complete the consultations.

“The first consultations were done by NFA, but now with the Norwegian funds, they have made it a must to include civil society organisations in the consultation process. In fact NAPE is one of the consultants brought on board to capture concerns of people living around forests in the central region,” said Kureeba.

Limited monetary benefits

As it reworks the country’s policy, Uganda has possible models for monitoring, governance and local benefit-sharing in the form of the International Small Group Tree Planting Program (TIST) and the Nile Basin Reforestation Project. In both of these cases, small groups of subsistence farmers engage in activities like tree planting and sustainable agriculture for sale of greenhouse gas credits.

David Mwayafu and Leo Peskett from the Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development carried out an evaluation.

Under the first programme, farmers get paid 35 Uganda shillings – about 20 cents – per tree per year.

“Assuming a farmer plants 400 trees on one hectare under TIST and that the TIST farmer re-negotiates [extends] their contract,” said Mwayafu, “the farmer under TIST will earn 400 trees x 30 payments x 35 shillings = 420,000 shillings per hectare.”

Expectations – and needs – of participants are often high, but that works out to $6 per hectare per year – less than $200 over 30 years.

In the Nile Basin Reforestation Project, community organisations are paid for trees grown on National Forest Reserve land; in this scheme, the World Bank purchases the carbon credits, and the NFA will pass on 15 percent of the total income raised. Mwayafu and Peskett note that “there is little understanding about the scale of benefits among [members of] the community association, which could result in risks for them and the NFA as the project progresses.”

But Mugumya says interventions like REDD will revitalise the country’s forestry sector.

“We have policies that could save forests but the implementation costs money and when you draw up a budget no one wants to look at it,” he said. “The major hurdle is strengthening the policies and putting in place an incentives strategy that will make trees worth more when they are still standing than when they are down.”

Focus on conservation

Yet this may be a dangerously optimistic view. While considerable time and resources are invested in working out a deal on REDD, it may prove important to simultaneously promote the intrinsic benefits of protecting and restoring forests and tree cover, as TIST does with its projects in Tanzania, Kenya, India and Uganda.

Trees on and around farms can provide fruit and nuts that can be sold; they provide shade for crops, protect against erosion and in some cases maintain nutrients in soil. Rural communities also make extensive use of densely wooded areas where there is no farming, and reforming the management of such forests in the name of carbon sequestration must be carefully considered.

NAPE’s Kureeba: “We have to go on the ground and find out whether people are buying the idea of REDD. Much as we bring money, people need to know and propose what will happen to forest management, to look at issues of access to the forest for food, herbs, poles for building and other issues like culture.”

Kureeba is worried that these details – vital to the ultimate beneficiaries of REDD – are of little interest to policy makers. “The problem is that government is after getting money. There’s less interest in the processes that will make a REDD initiative work for the people that depend on forests.”

“The issue of equity is important. Is the money going to go down to the intended beneficiaries given the corruption levels here or will it be like the money embezzled from Global Fund?” Kureeba questioned.

In 2005, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended a $367 million dollar grant to Uganda after auditors found government officials were embezzling large amounts of the money, intended to strengthen health services.

While the health minister and two deputies were sacked, concerns remain that funds raised for forest communities on global carbon markets will also be vulnerable to corruption, misdirected to administrative costs or out rightly stolen.

*This IPS story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network – http://www.cdkn.org.

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Nov 25 2010 (IPS)

The rapid growth of the ICT market in Uganda has been greeted with optimism over its potential to boost the country’s development. But less attention is being paid to the increase in gender based violence due to the use of information and communications technology.

Women at workshop on ICTs and violence against women in Namaingo: conflict over access and privacy is common in Uganda. Credit: Susan Kinzi/IPS

But the rapid adoption of mobiles has also seen a rise in invasion of privacy through SMS stalking, monitoring and control of partners’ whereabouts.

Anecdotal reports are backed by a new study, which found that the majority of ICT users have had conflicts within their families.

The study, by Aramanzan Madanda from Makerere University’s Department of Gender and Women Studies, found that about 46 percent of people had problems with spouses in relation to use of mobile phones and 16 percent reported having conflicts over use of computers.

These conflicts arose over issues of freedom and control. According to the research, conducted in two districts of Iganga and Mayuge from 2007-2010, the majority of victims of violence are women.

“Women reported physical violence while most men report psychological violence,” said Madanda, who also sits on the Uganda women’s caucus on ICT, hosted by Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET).

The research shows that communities are having difficulties coming to terms with the power of technology to bring about freedom for women.

“Traditionally, in Busoga (one of the study sites), a woman must seek her spouse’s consent to go anywhere, whether to visit a relative or go to the market,” Madanda explained. “But now women can be directly in touch with relatives and other people without their husband’s consent and since men have lost that power to control the women some turn to violence.”

Women often have to tell men who they are calling and who called them.

“And because of low literacy levels among women, they only know how to call. Most don’t know about safety features on phone or have any idea that their partners can view called numbers or read sent messages. They don’t use security codes,” the report says.

In some families, conversations must be on loudspeaker so that everyone knows who called you and what you are talking about.

The intrusion of women’s privacy using ICTs has also been exacerbated by women’s economic dependence on men.

The research found that the majority of people who have mobile phones are men. Eighty-eight percent of original buyers were men, while only 44 percent of the women had bought their phones. This means about 56 percent of women who own phones got them from someone else, usually from the husband or partner.

“The freedom lies in the purchasing power,” says Madanda.

Madanda’s study forms part of a growing awareness and acknowledgement of the darker side of the ICT boom in Uganda. In April, Uganda enacted the Domestic Violence Act, which for the first time acknowledges the link between the use of ICTs and domestic violence.

Under the law, repeated sending of abusive messages and calls to another person is regarded as an offense that can fetch a two-year jail term.

But of concern are Ugandan cyber laws, which pay limited attention to gender in general and none at all to gender-based violence.

“Only the Electronic Signatures Bill has one direct reference to females in section 86 (4), which is in respect to a search warrant for suspected offenders,” says a report by Goretti Zavuga Amuriat of WOUGNET.

The report says Uganda’s cyber laws are pre-occupied with e-government, e-commerce and data protection and the bills remain quite oblivious to the social and gender context.

“Most actors in the ICT industries are preoccupied with expansion and profit without much emphasis on the ramifications on gender based violence resulting from adoption,” said Madanda.

WOUGNET has trained women and rights advocates on how to use ICTs and also how to minimize the negative effects.

Through a programme aimed at strengthening women’s strategic use of ICTs to combat violence against women and girls, activists, service providers and women rights advocates have been given practical skills to ensure privacy.

“There have been successes. The women we trained now use mobile phones to report cases on domestic violence and other violence against women, although the ICTs available to most women in the fight against VAW are still very limited,” said Maureen Agena, a New Media trainer with WOUGNET.

Through campaigns like Take Back the Tech, the organisation has been successful in raising awareness of violence against women in Uganda through use of short message services (SMS). But how to address the violence that arises from use of ICTs remains to be tackled. The majority of mobile phone users are men and illiteracy is still a big challenge.

So ICTs can create jobs, reduce isolation of women but they still have a limitation as a tool for women’s empowerment. We still have attitudes towards women’s freedom. The poorest of the poor are women and they haven’t been reached with ICT in Uganda,” says Madanda.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Nov 17 2010 (IPS)

Thousands of women were raped during Uganda’s war but there have been few government efforts to assist them, especially with psychosocial and counseling services.

Women at workshop assessing the government's recovery plan for the north: sexual violence is an aspect of the conflict that has not been addressed. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

Nakasi was gang raped on three different occasions — first in 1987, then 1988 and 1990 — by soldiers who formed a heavy military presence in her village.

“The first time was in 1987 when I met nine soldiers on patrol who gang raped me until I lost consciousness. I later woke up in a hospital bed,” she told IPS. “I could tell they were government soldiers.”

Nakasi contracted HIV and developed a fistula. She was rejected by her husband and family and lived alone in a forest for many years.

She overcame her trauma with the support of different aid groups that have also supported her in campaigning for women’s economic empowerment and fighting stigma.

She runs paralegal activities, often following up cases of sexual violence in the area and encouraging women to face their offenders. She has a large support base for her candidature for council due to her work with people living with HIV and AIDS.

“I have so far managed to follow-up a case and have a man jailed for rape,” she says.

Little support for victims of war-time rape

But Nakasi’s story of her rise from victim of sexual gender based violence to survivor and leader is a unique one.

The two-decades long war in northern Uganda between government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) resulted in the internal displacement of about 1.5 million people and the death of thousands. Women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps suffered sexual violence from government soldiers and civilians. Although there are no official figures on the numbers of women affected, reports show this was wide spread. The rebels are well known for child kidnapping for use as child soldiers and the abduction of girls as sex slaves.

The war affected the north and north-eastern parts of Uganda until 2007 when the LRA rebels were pushed out to DRC after failed peace talks with the government mediated by the government of South Sudan.

A recent government post conflict recovery programme launched last year lacks a component on addressing the effects on victims of sexual violence in the war.

Further, recommendations calling for reparations for victims of sexual violence made by a commission of inquiry into violations of human rights in Uganda, covering the period from independence in 1962 through the second Obote Regime (1980 – 1985), have never been implemented.

Inadequate penalties

And according to a Uganda United Nations Security Council (UNSCR) Resolution 1325 monitoring report released on Nov. 9 by the Kampala-based Center for Women in Governance (CEWIGO), many cases of sexual violence in Uganda go unprosecuted. UNSCR 1325, which last month marked its 10th anniversary, acknowledged, for the first time, sexual gender based violence in conflict as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

The report, aimed at tracking Uganda’s progress on the implementation of the resolution, found that many cases are not reported. Rape is the least reported sexual offense in Uganda and the Ugandan law still does not recognise marital rape.

Of those cases that are reported, about half are prosecuted and very few carry penalties at the end of the day.

In 2009, Uganda registered and investigated 619 rape cases. Of those, 37 percent (228) were prosecuted and only five percent were penalised. More than seven thousand cases of the rape of children were reported and only 467 of these cases resulted in a penalty. Five hundred and fifty women reported indecent assault and only 79 were penalised.

An injustice to victims of sexual violence

Maude Mugisha from CEWIGO says most families cannot afford to take victims for medical examination or to transport the police to the crime scene. As a result, they opt to negotiate with the perpetrator. Criminal justice in Uganda requires any person who has been a victim of sexual violence to have a medical test, which is pertinent to the success or failure of a case.

However, only authorized police surgeons can carry out the examination. Not only are the police surgeons insufficient but victims must also pay between US$15 and US$25 to be examined.

“This is the greatest injustice that the survivors of sexual violence are subjected to in Uganda,” says Judy Kamanyi, a consultant in gender and development issues.

Rebecca Kadaga, the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament concurs. “It cannot only be a police surgeon that can examine a victim if we are to deliver justice. The examination services should be even carried out by midwives so that women stop paying so much money to access justice.”

Kamanyi says government should put in place shelters for women whose lives are in danger and also come up with an emergency plan for abused women and children that caters for their safety.

Access to justice for survivors of gender-based violence is also limited by the fact that sexual offenses are only tried at high court level and these are found in only in five regions of the country. Victims travel long distances to access the courts only to find there is no police surgeon present for the hearing. As a result, sexual offenses cases can take years to be heard.

According to CEWIGO, these gaps in delivery of justice to women victims of sexual violence show that Uganda is far from implementing regional and international instruments meant to safeguard women’s lives, especially in the case of war time rapes.

Miria Matembe, a founder member of CEWIGO says women must continue to pressure governments, especially in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, to implement resolution 1325.

“This resolution remains extremely important for us … We are a continent still infested with conflict with high levels of gender based violence,” she says.

The LRA rebels remain active in DRC, Central African Republic and South Sudan where they continue with abductions.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
SOROTI, Uganda, Nov 4 2010 (IPS)

Josephine Adongo’s heart leapt when she heard that two doctors from Kampala were offering free medical exams in Soroti. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer at a regional hospital more than a year previously, but unable to afford to travel to the capital for treatment.

Cervical cancer screening in Soroti, Uganda. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

She was disappointed to find that the visiting doctors had only come to screen women and refer anyone with dangerous signs to Kampala.

The screening, which is rare service to ordinary women across Uganda, was being offered by ISIS-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange, as part of the commemoration of ten years of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. ISIS is a women’s organisation that seeks to raise attention on the reproductive health of women in post-conflict areas.

Cervical cancer, caused primarily by the human papillomavirus (HPV), is the second most common cancer among women worldwide. In Uganda it ranks as the most frequently occurring cancer among women. According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) September 2010 report titled, “Human Papillomavirus and Related Cancers in Uganda”, every year 3,577 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 2,464 die from the disease.

Women like Adongo, in remote regions are at high risk.

The number could also be high due to the low level of cancer screening and limited data on the HPV burden in the general population of Uganda. Cancer screening services are only available at regional referral hospitals and many women cannot afford the transport costs to these centres.

Women, particularly from war affected areas, are also at high risk because of massive sexual violence, often gang rapes, they were subjected to.

According to Dr Tom Otim, gynecologist at Mbale Hospital in eastern Uganda, early marriages among rural women also places them at higher risk.

“The other major hindrance to prevention and treatment of cervical cancer is lack of information,” said Otim.

“If the women came when the conditions that lead to cancer can be detected it would greatly help. But few women have information about the existence of this cancer.”

Most Ugandan women report to health centres with advanced stages of cervical cancer, which include irregular vaginal bleeding and in some cases post menopausal bleeding.

“The outcry of many women is, why do you refer us to Mulago for radiotherapy when we can’t afford it?” Otim said. “It is demoralizing to diagnose a woman and you cannot improve her life. But what is even more painful is when you tell them the service is available but they cannot afford it because they are poor.”

The few regional cancer screening and treatment centres are mostly donor funded and once the donor funds are finished, there is little government uptake of the projects.

Helen Angura is a registered midwife trained in cervical cancer screening. The hospital where she works, Mbale regional referral hospital, has been unable to care for women whose tests show early symptoms that could develop into cervical cancer.

The screening project was funded by Women Health initiative under the National Institutes of Health. It was launched in May 2009 but after a year the radiotherapy machine at the hospital is not in operation.

“We have been unable to treat women with lesions that could develop into cervical cancer because the nitrous-oxide gas used to run the machine ran out four months ago,” said Angura.

“We have sent letters to the hospital administration since June and we haven’t heard from them. Hundreds of women whom we screened have been waiting.”

In a country that spends less than 10 percent of its annual budget on health, issues like reproductive health and especially conditions like cervical cancer are mostly ignored.

Uganda runs a decentralized healthcare system but funding comes from the central government.

Otim says the government must invest in prevention of cervical cancer. HPV vaccines that prevent against HPV 16 and 18 infections are now available but few Ugandans can afford them.

“We have very safe vaccines that have been proven to prevent cervical cancer but one has to pay over 600,000 shillings (US$300) for an entire dose,” Otim explained.

There are only two hospitals offering free vaccination. The programmes are all funded by Pathfinder International, an organisation that seeks to ensure that people everywhere have the right and opportunity to live a healthy reproductive life.

The WHO report recommended that government must include HPV vaccines in the national immunization programme if the risk is to be greatly reduced. The report also called for the integration of vaccination and cervical cancer screening programmes so that every woman who is screened is vaccinated. It would also require a countrywide campaign to inform ordinary Ugandans about the disease.

Meanwhile, women like Adongo will have to wait.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
NEW YORK, Sep 22 2010 (IPS)

African nations lack the political will to provide access to primary education to all children, according to the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of organisations in 100 countries.

Despite free and compulsory primary education, just 25 percent of Ugandan children entering grade one eventually graduate from primary school. Credit: IRIN

Out of the ten worst places in the world to be a school child, seven are in Africa: Somalia, Eritrea, Comoros, Ethiopia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia.

In East Africa, Uganda is the country with the worst education gaps, followed by Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya.

Despite the fact that Uganda passed an Education Act in 2008, which makes primary education compulsory, implementation remains a challenge. About 43 percent of the country’s children had not acquired primary education in 2008, while for 78 percent, secondary education remains an elusive dream.

Lack of accountability

This is mainly due to the fact that Uganda had the lowest public expenditure on education in East Africa, according to the report. At the end of the 2009/2010 financial year, the education ministry had not spent about seven million dollars budgeted to recruit teachers.

World Bank managing director and Nigeria’s former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called for more transparency in educational spending: “We need people to keep governments accountable to ensure quality education,” she said. “[We need to] track public expenditure in education down to school level.”

Okonjo-Iweala said that the International Development Association, the World Bank’s “fund for the poorest”, will make available an additional $750 million over next five years for education in the world’s 79 poorest countries. This, she said, is a 40 percent increase in donor money for education.

Education experts, however, say those amounts will still be insufficient. “It’s a welcome contribution from World Bank but a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed to get basic education for all children. Other donors are going to have to up their game on education, too,” cautioned Oxfam senior policy advisor Clare Godfrey.

But hoping for financial assistance from international donors will not be not enough, either. The GCE report stresses that developing countries must play their part, too, and commit 20 percent of their annual budget to education to meet MDG targets.

On the upside, there has been progress in a few African countries, such as in Tanzania, where an additional three million children are now able to go to school due to the introduction of free primary education. Mozambique has halved the number of out-of-school children, while Rwanda has increased the number of trained teachers.

But only in one country in sub-Saharan Africa do more than half of all children attend secondary school – in Cape Verde, the small island nation of about 430,000 people.

Conflict and war

One of the key reasons for the slow progress in access to education are unstable political and conflict situations in African countries.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who attended the meeting, said it was crucial to consider education in times of conflict as much as the provision of humanitarian aid. “We should work to fast-track education initiatives so that, in places with conflicts, education is available to the young at the frontiers in the same way as medicine,” he suggested.

Brown further highlighted the fact that education forms the basis for meeting other MDGs, such as poverty reduction and gender inequality. “Education is the best anti-poverty, anti-deprivation and best anti-crime programme,” he claimed.

He was referring to estimates by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) that 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty if they left school with nothing more than reading skills.

Apart from countries’ political situation, gender inequality is one of the main reasons for children’s limited access to education. “Girls are the real victims of the world’s failure to invest in education, with millions unable to enter school,” said GCE president Kailash Satyarthi.

Schooling for girls

Nthabiseng Tshabalala, a 12 year-old South African orphan from Soweto township and an ambassador for 1GOAL, a GCE campaign that used the FIFA Soccer World Cup to bring attention to education, spoke at the meeting about how difficult it is for many girls to get an education. “I am lucky to go to school, and I don’t take it for granted,” said Tshabalala, whose mother died when she was seven years old.

The GCE report also emphasised how educated girls become better mothers, which will have an impact on other MDGs, such as maternal health and child mortality. A child whose mother cannot read or write is 50 percent more likely to die before the age of five and twice as likely to suffer from malnutrition than a child whose mother completed primary school, the report stated.

Moreover, women with six or more years of education are more likely to seek prenatal care, assisted birth and post-natal care.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Aug 10 2010 (IPS)

The Uganda office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the country’s National Drug Authority are satisfied that the new version of the controversial Counterfeit Goods Bill does not threaten the importation and production of generic drugs by conflating them with fake drugs, as the first draft of the bill did. But health rights activists are not convinced.

The Ugandan government amended the Counterfeit Goods Bill after pressure from civil society organisations about provisions that could restrict access to affordable generic medicines, which currently make up the bulk of drugs used in the East African country’s health sector.

The definition of counterfeit goods in the first version of the bill was so wide that it would have criminalised the production and importation of legitimate, effective generic medication.

Joseph Mwoga, essential drugs advisor at the WHO country office in Uganda, told IPS that the revised bill would not affect access to generic medicines. “The bill was corrected and the fears that generic drugs would be affected are no more,” said Mwoga.

“The global debate is that in order for us to improve access to drugs we must have generic versions. If the earlier bill was accepted everything not original would have been affected.”

Mwoga said it was important that in a bid to cut down on counterfeit drugs entering the country, Uganda doesn’t deny the public access to drugs. About 90 percent of the medicines used in the country are imported.

The WHO defines counterfeit medicines as being “deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled with respect to identity and/or source”. The health body asserts that counterfeiting applies to both branded and generic products. Counterfeits may include products with the correct ingredients or with the wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients or with fake packaging.

The National Drug Authority (NDA), whose job would have been disrupted by the first version of the bill, has expressed their satisfaction with the revised bill. “They have put in the bill that issues relating to medicines shall be handled by the NDA, so we think that covers our concerns. Our act (the NDA Act) gives us enough powers to deal with drugs,” Apollo Muhairwe, NDA registrar, told IPS.

Muhairwe added that, as much as the NDA is the lead agency in regulating drugs, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) should not be totally removed from the function of regulating counterfeit drugs, a power given to it by the earlier version of the bill.

“UNBS is supposed to know about the standards of all goods entering Uganda. As much as the NDA is the lead agency, the law should not totally eliminate the role of UNBS,” said Muhairwe.

Sandra Kiapi, a health rights lawyer, said that although the new version of the bill is an improvement on the original one because of the role it gives to the NDA, the bill still needs clearer definitions: “This bill excludes medicines from the definition of counterfeit goods but there are certain issues that activists are still raising, especially regarding the WHO definition of what constitutes a counterfeit drug.”

Of specific concern to activists is that the government, and therefore the bill, should “separate intellectual property issues from the issue of the quality of medicines”. Activists will therefore continue lobbying government to clarify the distinction between counterfeit and substandard drugs.

There have also been concerns about the East African Anti Counterfeit Bill 2010 (EAC bill), which will supersede all national legislations. Apart from health rights activists who are monitoring progress with the bill to see if it distinguishes between generic and counterfeit drugs, the NDA is also keeping an eye.

“We have communicated to our ministry of health to follow up on the East African law in ensuring that medicines are treated differently to other products. Generic medicines should not be part of efforts to control intellectual property,” said Muhairwe.

Health rights proponents are concerned that the EAC bill may undermine the possible gains made with the redrafting of the Ugandan bill. Melody Ginamia, a human rights officer with the Uganda Human Rights Commission, argued that efforts should be put in reforming the regional law. “The government of Uganda should consider abandoning the Uganda Counterfeit Goods Bill 2010 as it will be superseded by the EAC bill. Further, the government should push for reform of the EAC bill in a bid to ensure the protection of the right to health through access to generic medicines,” she wrote in an opinion piece in the local newspaper the Daily Monitor.

Ginamia urged that Uganda take advantage of the flexibilities provided to least developed countries — such as Uganda — in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Uganda only has to implement the provisions of the TRIPS agreement on enforcement of intellectual property rights in 2016.

Excerpt:

By Rosebell Kagumire
KAMPALA, Jul 29 2010 (IPS)

Uganda’s National Drug Authority (NDA) says the failure rate among samples of medicines tested at their laboratories has fallen by 15 percent from the early 2000s. This serves as a possible indication of a drop in the availability of counterfeit medicines in the East African country.

According to the NDA registrar, Apollo Muhairwe, the work of the drug authority at border points has ensured that fewer counterfeit medicines make it into the Ugandan market.

“We have put measures in place during the last 10 years that have worked. Now we have embarked upon raising awareness among Ugandans to only buy their drugs from accredited outlets,” Muhairwe told IPS.

Counterfeit medicines can be both branded and generic medicines and refer to drugs without the necessary ingredients to treat the disease it is fraudulently purported to treat. Such drugs include anti-malarials, antibiotics and sexual stimulants.

But much as the NDA applauds itself on improving controls over counterfeits, the number of Ugandans exposed to counterfeits remains high.

It is estimated that at least 53 percent of the population lives within in a radius of less than five kilometres from a public health facility, with a range of between nine percent in parts near the northern border with Sudan to 100 percent in the capital Kampala.

According to the NDA, the country has over 5,000 “drug shops” (small-scale medicine retail outlets) and about 500 registered pharmacies, most of which operate in urban areas.

Sandra Jaclyn Kiapi, a health rights advocate, told IPS that the NDA’s work at ports of entry does not mean Uganda is close to being free from counterfeit medicines.

“The NDA is mostly Kampala-based. Their capacity is still weak. I think that may be the reason why the NDA was at first overlooked when the Counterfeit Goods Bill was drafted – that is, until civil society intervened,” said Kiapi.

The Counterfeit Goods Bill has caused an outcry in the east African state because of its conflation of legitimate generic medicine with counterfeit medicine.

“Most of the times counterfeit drugs were discovered at the border. What about the people out there in rural Uganda who are consuming pharmaceuticals?” Kiapi asked. “Is the NDA also active from the border with Sudan to the border with Rwanda?”

Swaibu Mukiibi, a pharmacist, told IPS that he still comes across counterfeit drugs at his practice.

“We have to admit that there are still counterfeits. Our borders are porous and many of our people don’t know how to detect such fakes. To a large extent only pharmacists would be able to detect counterfeits from physical appearance; other practitioners may not be able,” explained Mukiibi.

The Counterfeit Goods Bill is partly controversial because it assigns customs officials the duty of deciding whether drugs are counterfeit or not.

Mukiibi said the limited number of pharmacists in the country makes the situation worse. Ugandan pharmacists mostly operate in urban settings. With Uganda importing about 90 percent of the medicines consumed in the country, coupled with poorly trained or untrained drug dispensers, the issue of counterfeits is far from being resolved.

The NDA believes the solution lies in accrediting all pharmacies and drug shops across the country, an initiative that is underway.

“We have already started a project in Kibale district to ensure all drug shops are assessed and authorised,” said Muhairwe. “In other areas where people have to walk miles to get to facilities we are encouraging people to start drug shops.”

A 2002 Pharmaceutical Sector Baseline Survey found that only 47 percent of surveyed public health facilities had more than 75 percent of key medicines available. Though the situation has improved, most Ugandans buy medicines out of pocket.

The NDA also raises awareness through the use of SMS campaigns. In a country where more than five million people have mobile phones, the campaign promises to reduce the number of Ugandans buying counterfeit medicines.

The SMS initiative, launched in October 2009, seeks to convince Ugandans to buy drugs only from pharmacies and drug shops accredited by the NDA.

Spokesperson for the NDA Fredrick Ssekyana told IPS the project has grown in the last three months with the extension of services outside urban areas.

“Ugandans in hard to reach places are more vulnerable to unscrupulous traders in medicines because of fewer drug shops being around,” said Ssekyana. “We are therefore extending the accreditation of pharmacies and drug shops in those areas with the SMS campaign to make known places with safe medicine.”

At the beginning of the year only about 150 Ugandans sent messages to inquire about the places to buy safe medicine but with the move to include rural Ugandans the authority now gets over 1,000 messages per month.

Using a mobile phone, a Ugandan in any part of the country can send a message to the NDA to get the name of the pharmacy or drug shop that stocks a particular medicine or food supplement. The service also has also been extended to condoms.

The only sure way of eliminating counterfeit drugs lies in cutting off the demand from unsuspecting Ugandans.

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