RIGHT TO HEALTH practices” and the fact that they had On 5 March, the Ministry of Health received inhabited the forest for many generations. It the first batch of AstraZeneca Covid-19 directed that the evicted Batwa people vaccines from COVAX. It aimed to vaccinate should be given appropriate compensation to 49.6% of the population, about 22 million improve their situation following evictions, people, in stages by the end of the year, but saying that the government had not only 9,763,030 vaccine doses had been adequately compensated them, and had left administered by 31 December. In October, them a “landless, destitute… disadvantaged the health minister said that limited access to and marginalized people”. rural areas had hampered progress in the GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AND vaccination programme. On 23 December, DISCRIMINATION the government announced it had approved the use of a Covid-19 vaccine booster shot. In August, President Museveni refused to RIGHT TO EDUCATION give his assent to the Sexual Offences Bill 2021 on grounds that it should be reviewed Intermittent Covid-19 lockdowns led to full or to address redundant provisions already partial school closures. Despite a phased provided for in other legislation. The bill, reopening for some grades in February, which was passed by parliament in May, schools were closed again in June although proposed several provisions for the the government announced plans to reopen prevention of sexual violence, including them in January 2022. The National Planning greater punishment for sexual offenders, and Authority predicted that more than 30% of the protection of survivors during trials learners would not return to school.5 concerning sexual offences and other crimes. FORCED EVICTIONS The proposed law, however, criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations, sex Between 2017 and January 2021, security work and HIV transmission and provided for forces had forcibly evicted more than 35,000 a sex offenders’ register that would include people (over 2,300 families) from their people accused, even retrospectively, of homes in the western Kiryandongo district, to consensual same-sex sexual relations and make way for industrial farming projects.6 sex work. Between 12 February and the end of the In September, Cleopatra Kambugu year, at least 22 residents were arrested and announced on social media that she had released on bond or bail in connection with become the first trans woman to obtain a protests against evictions and land disputes. Ugandan national identification card and In April, the Minister of Lands, Housing and passport which recognized her female Urban Development ordered two gender. multinational agribusiness companies to halt any further evictions affecting 10,000 REFUGEES’ AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS residents from a 5,155-hectare piece of land According to the Office of the Prime Minister in Kiryandongo’s Ndoi village, pending a and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, decision on whether due process had been Uganda was hosting 1,563,604 refugees at followed. the end of the year, the largest refugee In August, Uganda’s constitutional court population in Africa. These included 953,630 found that the Uganda Wildlife Authority had people from South Sudan, about 61% of the illegally evicted the Batwa Indigenous people country’s refugee population; and 452,287, from their ancestral land in the Mgahinga almost 29%, from the Democratic Republic forest in the south-west. The court ruled that of the Congo; people from other countries, the Batwa people owned the whole or part of including Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, the area on which the forest is located “in Somalia and Sudan made up about 10%. accordance with their customs and/or Amnesty International Report 2021/22 379