Casualties Overview

Details and trends

In 2011, the Uganda Mine Action Center (UMAC) reported 15 explosive remnants of war (ERW) casualties in three incidents; one incident caused 12 of the casualties.[1] All casualties occurred in northern Uganda, as in 2010. All reported casualties were male, at least 10 were boys. All casualties were civilians.

This represented a significant increase from the three casualties reported in 2010 though it was similar to the nine casualties in 2009.[2] The rate of casualties in 2011 remains consistent with the general trend of declining annual casualty figures since a peak of about 150 casualties per year during 1996–1997.[3] However, given the lack of a central data collection mechanism, it is likely that some casualties were not identified.[4]

The total number of casualties in Uganda is not known. At least 2,759 casualties (529 killed and 2,230 injured) had been identified by December 2011.[5] Of the people injured, 1,810 occurred in northern Uganda and the remaining 420 were in the west. All casualties in the west were recorded as injured; if any were killed, they were not recorded. This was due to the fact that data collection has been mainly carried out by local survivors’ organizations whose primary interest is identifying survivors. As such, it is certain that people have been killed by mines/ERW in western Uganda who have not been recorded.[6]

A 2006 survey of mine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) casualties in Gulu district determined that 3% of recorded casualties (1,387 at the time) were caused by cluster munition remnants. Five other suspected submunition casualties were reported in 2006.[7] As of the end of 2011, no additional casualties caused by cluster munition remnants had been identified since 2006.

Victim Assistance

There are at least 2,230 mine/ERW survivors in Uganda.[8]

Victim Assistance since 1999[9]

When monitoring of victim assistance began in 1999, most victim assistance services were provided by international organizations responding to the needs of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees based in northern Uganda. Services were mainly limited to emergency medical care, trauma response and physical rehabilitation services. Most services were free for mine/ERW survivors. However, long distances and a lack of affordable transportation prevented some 50% of survivors from accessing needed care in that year.

The formation of the Uganda Landmine Survivor Association (ULSA) in 2004 increased opportunities for peer support and survivor-led advocacy, though ULSA’s activities were limited due to its dependence on scarce external funding. However, by the end of 2011 ULSA had supported the development of dozens of local survivor associations in western and northern Uganda.

With the significant reduction in violence in northern Uganda in 2006 and progress towards peace in neighboring countries, several international organizations closed or reduced their programs in Uganda between 2008 and 2010, transferring the responsibility to provide victim assistance services to relevant government ministries. At the same time, mine survivors who were IDPs returned home to other parts of the country, increasing the need for updated surveys and victim assistance services in those areas. Through the end of 2011, the impact of the departure of several international organizations from northern Uganda remained and there were gaps in physical rehabilitation, economic inclusion and psychological support as well as the means to access services. As a result, there were more survivors in need of services than there had been some 10 years before. Handicap International (HI) responded to the existing need by launching a new victim assistance program in western Uganda in 2010 that was designed to facilitate access to existing programs and services, mostly those provided through government ministries.

Throughout the period, victim assistance coordination was very limited. Uganda developed a national victim assistance plan in 2008 which was revised in 2010 and extended by two years to 2014.

Victim Assistance in 2011

In 2011, coordination of victim assistance was improved somewhat through the formation of the National Intersectoral Committee on Disability, though meetings were few and only included actors working at the national level. The availability of affordable physical rehabilitation and psychological support in northern Uganda, the area with the greatest number of mine/ERW survivors, was significantly reduced with the temporary suspension of rehabilitation services by International Service Volunteers Association (Associazione Volontari per il Servizio Internazionale, AVSI) one of the remaining international service providers in the region.[10] While ULSA, local survivor associations, HI and ICRC continued reaching out to survivors to make them aware of services and to assist them in accessing those services, most survivors and persons with disabilities remained unable to access services either because they could not afford transportation and/or the cost of services, or they were unaware of what services might be available to them.

Assessing victim assistance needs

Uganda’s Comprehensive Plan on Mine Victim Assistance 2010–2014 sought to establish a database on disability by 2011; in December 2011, Uganda “continued to prioritize the need for data” on mine/ERW survivors.[11] However, in 2011 no efforts were made by the government to assess the needs of mine/ERW survivors.[12] In 2009, through the Community Information Survey, Uganda collected baseline data to identify the needs of survivors and the gaps in services in four districts in northern Uganda.[13] By May 2012, there was no system in place to unify and update this data so that it could be used to determine if these needs had been met.[14]

Uganda reported that there remained an overall lack of data on the needs of persons with disabilities, including mine/ERW survivors, and on the services available to them; there was also a lack of capacity within relevant ministries to collect and coordinate this data.[15] No progress was made in 2011 to establish a national casualty surveillance system designed by the Ministry of Health (MoH) that had been under development since 2008.[16] In early 2012, staff members of the MoH and Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD) were identified to receive training to lead the implementation of the surveillance system.[17] The surveillance system was intended to include data on mine survivors and other persons with disabilities.[18]

HI collected data on the needs of survivors and other persons with disabilities in western and northern Uganda in collaboration with local partner organizations and also identified relevant service providers in these regions. After assessing the needs of survivors, HI connected them to available services. HI forwarded all data collected on mine/ERW survivors to UMAC for inclusion on the Information Management System for Mine Action database.[19] ULSA regularly collected data on mine/ERW survivors and shared this data with other victim assistance stakeholders during coordination meetings.[20]

Victim assistance coordination[21]

In 2011, the Forum on Victim Assistance remained inactive. During the year, the National Community Based Rehabilitation Steering Committee, chaired by the Minister for the Disabled and Elderly, within MGLSD, met quarterly to discuss disability issues. It was comprised of the National Council for Disability, the National Union for Persons with Disabilities and NGO service providers. As of June 2012, the guidelines for the Steering Committee were being revised to allow new disabled persons’ organizations (DPOs) to join.[22] In 2012, Uganda reported that this committee, under a new name, the Intersectoral Committee on Disability, would replace the Forum on Victim Assistance as the coordinating mechanism for victim assistance.[23]

Committee meetings were seen as an effective way for service providers to share information on their activities, though it was felt that more stakeholders needed to be included in the meetings.[24] There was a lack of victim assistance coordination between national and district-level actors and, as such, the impact of coordination was not felt “on the ground” where victim assistance activities were being implemented. HI and MGLSD held periodic bilateral meetings to coordinate activities.[25]

During 2011, MGLSD and other victim assistance operators worked toward the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan of Action on Victim Assistance 2010–2014, published in August 2010.[26] In 2010, objectives from the previous 2008–2012 plan had been reviewed and aligned to relevant national policies such as the National Development Plan and the National Disability Policy as well as to international mechanisms such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Cartagena Action Plan, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[27]

Throughout 2011, Uganda had no monitoring mechanism in place to monitor progress towards the objectives of the plan. Although a comprehensive monitoring tool for the plan of action was developed in 2009 (with assistance from the Antipersonnel Mine Ban Convention Implementation Support Unit) and baseline data was collected, it was never implemented.[28] Through the end of 2011, Uganda lacked the human, technical and financial resources to use the tool or to establish some other mechanism to monitor activities. Both the decentralization of service provision and the lack of a coordination system to collect information related to victim assistance on a regular basis from the district and sub-county level were both cited by the government as obstacles towards monitoring progress in implementing the victim assistance plan.[29]

The National Disability Plan 2010–2014 included mine/ERW survivors in its implementation. The national focal point for the implementation of the CRPD was the same as the focal point for victim assistance under the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[30] It was not reported if this attempt to integrate victim assistance within broader disability efforts had increased Uganda’s fulfillment of its obligations to survivors across all three complementary conventions.

Uganda provided updates on progress in and challenges to victim assistance at the Eleventh Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Phnom Penh on 29 November 2011, at the Convention on Cluster Munitions intersessional meetings in Geneva in April 2012, and at the Mine Ban Treaty intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2012.[31] Uganda did not provide information on victim assistance through Form J its Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report.[32]

Inclusion and participation in victim assistance

ULSA was included in coordination meetings of the Disability Committee and provided input into the government’s preparation of the Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report for 2011. Uganda did not include a survivor as a member of its delegation to international meetings of the Mine Ban Treaty.[33]

Survivors and persons with disabilities were involved in the identification and assessment of survivor needs and supported them in accessing medical, rehabilitation and economic inclusion services.[34] In some districts in northern Uganda, a limited amount of government support, such as mobility devices and economic assistance, was provided to survivors and persons with disabilities through ULSA and the Disabled Persons’ Union.[35]

Service accessibility and effectiveness

Victim assistance activities[36]

Government efforts continued in 2011 to improve emergency medical response in the rural areas.[37] However, most health units lacked capacity to effectively handle trauma when it occurred and continuing medical attention was inadequate; health centers in rural areas, where 87% of survivors lived, were “grossly understaffed.”[38] Throughout 2011, the cost of specialized treatment and medications prevented many survivors from getting the assistance they needed.[39]

The availability of affordable physical rehabilitation in northern Uganda was drastically reduced in 2011. With the temporary suspension of rehabilitation services by AVSI at the Gulu rehabilitation centers in northern Uganda in 2011, management was handed over to the MoH. As a result, there were no longer any NGO-assisted rehabilitation centers in the region and the cost of prosthetic devices doubled, making them unaffordable for most mine/ERW survivors.[40] In the eastern and western parts of the country, improvements at the two ICRC-supported rehabilitation centers resulted in more than triple the number of mine survivors assisted, though the total (52) was still far short of the population needing assistance.[41] The inconsistent availability of materials for the production of prosthetic devices continued to be a problem throughout 2011.[42] A system to import and store materials developed by the MoH and approved in December 2011 was intended to improve this situation.[43]

The temporary suspension of the ASVI program also impacted the availability of psychological support for survivors in northern Uganda. However, this was at least in part offset by the increased availability of peer support through local survivor associations. As in previous years, the number and size of local associations increased in 2011.[44] HI trained 17 survivor associations in western Uganda in peer support to improve the quality of the support being provided.[45]

Economic inclusion was the area in which the government made its most significant contribution to the implementation of the national victim assistance plan. The government recognized the need to fill the gaps created by the closing of the economic inclusion programs of many international organizations working in northern Uganda, including ASVI. In 2011, MGLSD helped survivors in northern Uganda gain job skills through apprenticeships and provided them with tools to establish their own small businesses. It also provided grants to support the development of small businesses by groups of survivors. The MGLSD launched a new program to provide three-year pensions for persons with disabilities from chronically poor households. Survivors were also entitled to participate, however the Ministry had no information about whether any survivors had benefited from the program.[46]

In 2011, ULSA carried out a survey to identify beneficiaries for a new project on economic inclusion in three districts in northern Uganda, Lira, Alebtong and Otuke, where mine survivors had not previously had access to such support.[47]

Social inclusion activities for mine/ERW survivors, such as sports programs, remained extremely limited in Uganda in 2011.[48] ULSA supported the development of a survivor football team in one mine-affected district and, by 2011, the district had supported the establishment of a disabled football league. The sports program was seen to have a positive impact on the perception of survivors and other persons with disabilities by the local community.[49]

In 2011, HI expanded its awareness-raising and referrals program to include Gulu and Amuru districts in northern Uganda, while sustaining its program in Kasese district in western Uganda. HI raised awareness among survivors and persons with disabilities about available services, including medical care, physical rehabilitation and economic inclusion programs, and helped to connect them with these services, providing financial support to the most vulnerable. As a result, access was improved for many survivors and other persons with disabilities in three districts in western Uganda, where the program started. [50] However, there continued to be many survivors and persons with disabilities in need in these areas.

Gender-appropriate services were not available to all persons with disabilities in health centers. In addition, it was very difficult for children to access services as often as needed.[51]

The law prohibited discrimination against persons with disabilities, but it was not enforced and discrimination was common.[52] Despite the development of Accessibility Standards in 2010 that were designed to increase access for persons with disabilities to public spaces,[53] the standards lacked the force of law and most schools and 80% of hospitals and health centers remained inaccessible in 2011.[54] In 2011, the review of the Disability Act 2006 to ensure harmonization with the requirements of the CRPD, started in 2010, was ongoing. In addition, a bill was introduced to parliament to align the National Council on Disability with the CRPD.[55]

Uganda ratified the CRPD on 25 September 2008.