By Matthew Russell Lee
KAMPALA, October 6 -- On its way to Sudan, the UN Security Council early Wednesday morning reached its first official stop in Entebbe, Uganda. Their UN-painted plane landed on the airstrip where in 1978 Israeli assault troops moved on a plane full of hijackers and hostages. This was barely comment on, however. It was the middle of the night.
The Security Council's Terms of Reference for Uganda were released Monday in New York, after Uganda's Permanent Representative Ruhakana Rugunda had held a press conference about the Council's work.
The five bullet point range from supporting the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army and the Uganda troops in Somalia to “examining... the Regional Service Center in Entebbe.”
With Entebbe the first stop after sunrise Wednesday, some wondered why the Council members, staff and press were driven fifty kilometers in the middle of the night, past other hotels, past Kampala, to the plush “Speke Resort - Munyonyo.” The scuttlebutt is that the government wanted the Ambassadors to stay in this particular hotel.
Inner City Press rode in a World Health Organization van, past tidy shops including the Jesus Cares Supermarket and branches of Tropical Bank and Post Bank, speaking with a Ugandan staff member of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UN Resident Representative had asked him to come to the airport at midnight and he had.
He said his job is to monitor human rights, showing reports to the government, and to work with the local media. Inner City Press asked if his Office has received any push back about the wider OHCHR's Democratic Republic of the Congo Mapping Report, which accuses the Ugandan UPDF army of atrocities in the DRC. Not much, he said. Those complaints are directed elsewhere.
Since the Lord's Resistance Army forms one of the Council's five bullet points for Uganda, Inner City Press asked what his office had to say about the LRA. Not much, he said, the LRA has long left, to the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan (where they Council's going midday Wednesday).
In fact, the Council could order its mission in the Congo, MONUSCO, to do more to break up reported LRA camps there. Uganda's Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda was his government's negotiator on LRA in 2006, and visited Juba as he will later on Wednesday.
To the UN plane, October 5-6, 2010, TOR not shown (c) MRLee
Inner City Press asked about the situation in Karamoja on which it has reported, specifically on UNDP funded involuntary disarmament of pastoralist Karamojong resulting in death and village burn downs. There are still incidents, he said. But what is the UN doing about them? It is not on the Council's agenda.
Footnote: in the VIP lounge in Nairobi, a request was made to Inner City Press on behalf of a unnamed Council member not to report that “nothing is being done.” There is, of course, one or more ways to avoid that. Inner City Press is here to cover the Council's trip and results through Uganda, South Sudan, Darfur and Khartoum. Watch this site, follow on Twitter @InnerCityPress.
