April 21, 2021
President Yoweri Museveni inspecting an army parade
The USA threatened action against human rights abuses in Uganda for months in 2020 and last Friday an official travel ban was announced against unnamed high-profile government officials shining critical light on an increasingly important question: How damaging are the existential consequences for such banishment for the country and certainly the sanctioned individuals?
Though no names were mentioned, at least we have an inkling of who must be on the travel blacklist. When Congressmen began pushing the outgone Donald Trump administration last October for a more muscular response to what they described as “human rights abuses in Uganda and the country’s slide toward authoritarianism, the lead campaigners brandished a list of errant Ugandan officers that should be sanctioned.