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INTRODUCTION

The following is a Monthly Conflict Scan Report produced in Uganda by the USAID Supporting Access to Justice, Fostering Equity and Peace (SAFE) Program.

The report covers the month of February 2015. The SAFE Program conducts monthly conflict scans to better understand and respond to conflict patterns and trends as they develop throughout Uganda. The scan is also intended to inform the work of SAFE’s partners and that of other stakeholders. Information is primarily filtered through SAFE’s trained Conflict Monitors who report on conflict incidents that occur in their communities.

SAFE has Mobile Coordinators based in West Nile, Acholi, Bunyoro and Karamoja sub regions. SAFE has also trained conflict monitors in Bukedi, Kigezi, West Nile, Karamoja, Lango and Ankole sub regions. The information provided by the Mobile Coordinators and Conflict Monitors is supplemented with reports issued by the media and civil society organizations (CSOs).

The SAFE Program verifies reported incidents for accuracy. For a more detailed description of the monthly conflict scan methodology, please refer to Appendix A at the back of this report.

Eight (8) categories of conflicts are monitored in the Monthly Conflict Scan:

• Governance related conflicts

• Land conflicts

• Politically related conflicts

• Economic distress and poverty

• Spill over conflicts

• Environmental issues

• Identity based conflict

• Other kinds of conflicts that do not fall into the first seven categories (see Appendix B for the types of conflicts)

The conflicts are additionally disaggregated by industry or sector, where relevant (for example, oil and gas, mining, infrastructure, manufacturing, and agriculture).

Conflict incidents are additionally categorized by colors, which represent their status at the time of the report.

Categories include:

• RED: Currently experiencing violence

• ORANGE: High-risk situations with the potential to degenerate into large scale violence involving at least ten people

• YELLOW: Medium-risk situations where tension is growing gradually

• GREEN: Situations with low-risk for large scale violence but also have a negative impact on social cohesion

Each of the eight conflict-categories is assessed for the extent to which each meets the criteria of conflict-levels identified in color-codes. Only verified conflict incidents are reported in the Monthly Conflict Scan. In this case verification involves cross checking of the facts and authenticity of the reported conflict incidents from local leaders and other authorities in areas where conflict incidents occur. For this reason, it is likely that the SAFE Program may not report some conflicts, if information is not readily available for verification purposes..

The report analyzes sub-data for the four traditional regions of Uganda: Northern (Acholi, Lango, Karamoja and West Nile sub regions); Eastern (Teso, Busoga, Bugisu, Sebei, and Bukedi sub regions); Western (Ankole, Kigezi, Bunyoro and Tooro sub regions); and Central (Buganda sub region).