NGO WORK
US Government Annual Aid To Uganda Hits Shs 3.5 Trillion
The United States of America has released a report detailing the amount of money it has spent towards assisting Uganda in various sectors including Education, Health, Justice, stability all hinged on ensuring the prosperity of Ugandans.
The details of the 55-page report titled “Report to the Ugandan people” the first of its kind, released by the US mission in Kampala early this week reveals that the US spent $840.4m approximately (3.5 trillion).
How sectors gained
According to the report, the health sector took the lion’s share of the US aid to the country, after being allotted $488.3m (about Shs 1.7 trillion).
This aid to Uganda’s needy healthy sector places US the largest donor to Uganda. The assistance in health by US, according to the report, focuses on scaling down the threats of infectious diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria and improving the mothers and newborns’ health.
US reveals that they funded programmes in the sector through providing life-saving medicines, empowering girls, saving mothers, and allowing Ugandans to live longer, more productive lives.
Stability
The US explains in its report that Uganda’s stability is very important to its work in the country and therefore, making it the second-largest funded area.
During the same period, the US spent $279.6 million (about Shs 951.2bn) in assistance to guarantee a stable Uganda.
Some of the resources were, according to the report, spent on efforts to professionalise Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF). The US rolled out training in human rights and peacekeeping methods to more than 5,000 UPDF soldiers.
Other areas “to ensure stability” that the US invested in over the year included programmes that promote peaceful dialogue as a means of avoiding conflict and violence. Through legal aid programmes, the US has, for example, helped families to peacefully resolve land disputes and other conflicts, especially in northern Uganda which was ravaged by more than two decades of civil war.
Influx of Refugees
During the period under review, the US government contributed $126.5 million (about Shs 453.8bn) to assist refugees in Uganda and vulnerable population in Karamoja sub-region.
Going by the rate at which refugees from the neighboring troubled countries-especially South Sudan, that figure is likely to increase in the next financial year.
In fostering the Global Health Security Agenda, the US indicates that it supported Uganda to develop world-class capabilities to detect and control infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola, yellow fever, and cholera.
Health officials are supported with tools and equipped with skills to respond in the case of a health emergency.
With assistance from CDC, USAID, and other US government partners, the US government says it is helping to improve Uganda’s preparedness and emergency management capacity by establishing Uganda’s Public Health Emergency Operation Center and training workers to detect diseases before they spread.
Income-generation
According to the report, the US government also invested money in activities aimed at making Ugandans stable economically. Indeed, US spent $47.5m (about Shs 161.7bn) in this area.
In the report, the US government says $68.8 million worth of coffee was sold by farmers associated with one of its flagship economic programmes, the Feed the Future programme in the financial year 2015/2016.
The assistance, the report notes, seeks to generate a stronger economic climate, reduce poverty, and expand trade and investment opportunities. The activities include efforts to add value to the production chains of maize, coffee, and beans, as well as training programmes and microfinance projects for entrepreneurs.
“We encourage increased trade between Uganda and the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which helps domestic exporters take advantage of trade preferences and provide greater access to US markets,” the report says.
The US also funds conservation activities which are helping in combating illegal trafficking and environmental destruction, in an effort to protect Uganda’s abundant natural biodiversity.
With one of the youngest populations in the world, the US is supporting efforts in the country to build what it terms as an inclusive, educated, and empowered Uganda through funding of $14.7million (about Shs50bn).
“US-funded programmes in Uganda aim to ensure all voices, especially those of women and youth, are fully represented in all aspects of life and development. The activities we support seek to ensure that every Ugandan benefits from the country’s economic growth, receives a quality education, and has the opportunity to contribute to society,” the report clarifies.
Efforts by the US government to promote a more just and democratic Uganda receive the least funding of the five priority areas the US government funds. It is, however, significant given that some of the development partners find this sector unappealing. The US government, according to the report donated $10.3 million (about Shs 35 billion).
The programmes facilitated aim at building “the capacity of civil society actors to advocate on behalf of their fellow Ugandans, especially those who traditionally face neglect or discrimination such as women, LGBT individuals, ethnic and religious minorities, and persons with disabilities.”
By training judges and other activists to protect human rights, the US government says it aims at supporting efforts to increase transparency in government, and combat corruption.
KANO, NIGERIA – APRIL 12: A Nigerian schoolboy is vaccinated against polio during a mass nationwide polio inoculation April 12, 2005, in Kano, Nigeria. International aid workers once hoped to have polio eradicated off the face of the Earth by April 2005, the 50th anniversary of the approval of the polio vaccine. But recent efforts by some Nigerian Muslim leaders to stop Western inoculation programs have allowed polio to endure. Creating new victims even while hundreds of thousands of Nigerians suffer from the disease. Opportunities are scarce for polio sufferers, but programs like the Polio Victims Association allow them to make a small living, welding hand-cranked polio bicycles and other projects for a small salary. Nigeria is undergoing a massive countrywide push to inoculate every child under five – nearly 40 million doses of polio vaccine countrywide in four days. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
Overall intentions
In her foreword to the report, Deborah Malac, the US ambassador to Uganda says: “The objective of our (aid) programmes is simple: we want to help Ugandans create a healthy, prosperous and stable country with just and democratic governance, which will in turn produce an inclusive, educated, and empowered population,” she explains.
Malac says her government believes by channeling America’s aid to Uganda in the five areas above, Ugandans will “live up to their full potential” and “this is the future that all Ugandans regardless of age, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political beliefs deserve.”
According to both the report and the foreword note by Malac, US’s aid is aimed at human development.
@deowalusimbi
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Minority Rights Group welcomes today’s decision by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the case of Ogiek people v. Government of Kenya. The decision reiterates previous findings of more than a decade of unremedied violations against the indigenous Ogiek people, centred on forced evictions from their ancestral lands in the Mau forest.
The Court showed clear impatience concerning Kenya’s failure to implement two landmark rulings in favour of the indigenous Ogiek people: in a 2017 judgment, that their human rights had been violated by Kenya’s denial of access to their land, and in a 2022 judgment, which ordered Kenya to pay nearly 160 million Kenyan shillings (about 1.3 million USD) in compensation and to restitute their ancestral lands, enabling them to enjoy the human rights that have been denied them.
Despite tireless activism from the community and the historic nature of both judgments, Kenya has not implemented any part of either decision. The community remains socioeconomically marginalized as a result of their eviction and dispossession. Evictions have continued, notably in 2023 with 700 community members made homeless and their property destroyed, and in 2020 evicting about 600, destroying their homes in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Daniel Kobei, Executive Director of the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program stated, ‘We have been at the African Court six times to fight for our rights to live on our lands as an indigenous people – rights which our government has denied us and continues to violate, compounding our plights and marginalization, despite clear orders from the African Court for our government to remedy the violations. This is the seventh time, and we were hopeful that the Court would be more strict to the government of Kenya in ensuring that a workable roadmap be followed in implementation of the two judgments.’
Kenya has repeatedly justified the eviction of Ogiek as necessary for conservation, although the forest has seen significant harm since evictions began. Many in the community see a connection between their eviction and Kenya’s participation in lucrative carbon credit schemes.
‘The Court’s decision underscores the importance of timely and full implementation of measures imposed on a state which has been found to be in breach of their internationally agreed obligations. Kenya must now repay its debt to the indigenous Ogiek by restituting their land and making reparations, among other remedies ordered by the Court’, said Samuel Ade Ndasi, African Union Advocacy and Litigation Officer at Minority Rights Group.
The decision states, ‘the court orders the respondent state to immediately take all necessary steps, be they legislative or administrative or otherwise, to remedy all the violations established in the judgment on merits.’ The court also reaffirmed that no state can invoke domestic laws to justifiy a breach of international obligations.
Both of the original judgments were historic precedents, breaking new ground on the issue of restitution and compensation for collective violations experienced by indigenous peoples and confirming the vital role of indigenous peoples in safeguarding ecosystems, that states must respect and protect their land rights, that lands appropriated from them in the name of conservation without free, prior and informed consent must be returned, and their right to be the ultimate decision makers about what happens on their lands. Today’s decision adds to this tally of precedents as it is the first decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights concerning the record of a state in implementing a binding decision.
The case
In October 2009, the Kenyan government, through the Kenya Forestry Service, issued a 30-day eviction notice to the Ogiek and other settlers of the Mau Forest, demanding that they leave the forest. Concerned that this was a perpetuation of the historical land injustices already suffered, and having failed to resolve these injustices through repeated national litigation and advocacy efforts, the Ogiek decided to lodge a case against their government before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights with the assistance of Minority Rights Group, the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program and the Centre for Minority Rights Development. The African Commission issued interim measures, which were flouted by the Government of Kenya and thereafter referred the case to the African Court based on the complementarity relationship between the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and on the grounds that there was evidence of serious or massive human rights violations.
On 26 May 2017, after years of litigation, a failed attempt at amicable settlement and an oral hearing on the merits, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights rendered a merits judgment in favour of the Ogiek people. It held that the government had violated the Ogiek’s rights to communal ownership of their ancestral lands, to culture, development and use of natural resources, as well as to be free from discrimination and practise their religion or belief. On 23 June 2022, the Court rejected Kenya’s objections and set out the reparations owed for the violations established in the 2017 judgment.
Source: minorityrights.org
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