End of February bad news came from Uganda : The Lord Resistance Army announced that it would not renew the 8-months truce with the government that expired on 1 st of March. The talks between the two sides had collapsed in December over disagreement of the role of Sudan in hosting the talks. The LRA demands a new venue and different mediators. The announcement is causing much worry about the 20 year war starting again though by the time this report is written (middle of March) there has been no fighting, and even signals from international mediators that the crisis may be overcome without further bloodshed.

Project Preparation
Consultant Shall Sinha spent the month of February mostly in Kampala contacting possible funders, and trying to finish the registration of NP. Unfortunately we have not been able to find grants for the project so far. Shall has left Uganda end of February with his two months' consultancy being ended. We thank him very much for his work under difficult circumstances.

The plan now is that while the new African Coordinator Ombok Otieno will keep an eye on things for the time being, we will try to send a two-person team to Uganda later this year (around June probably) to conduct what is called “phase 1” in the Uganda project proposal. Their task would be to reassess the situation with all the changes that have happened recently, and formulate a concrete mandate for a NP team if possible. This team will be headed by Oloo Otieno who is currently District Coordinator in Sri Lanka .

Report written by Christine Schweitzer (Programme Director)