Attacks on people with albinism in Uganda are drawing renewed attention, as communities and activists call for stronger protections and accountability.
A link and a headline are sometimes enough to signal a pattern. NewVision, one of Uganda's main daily newspapers, recently published an investigation under the headline "Who is hunting Uganda's albinos?" — a question that points to an ongoing and documented threat facing people with albinism across the country.
Uganda sits within a wider East and Central African region where people with albinism face targeted violence, often connected to the demand for body parts used in ritual practices. The UN Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism, Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond, has reported that such attacks remain underreported and underprosecuted across the continent.
The framing of the NewVision piece — using "hunting" as a verb — reflects a reality that human rights organisations have documented for more than a decade. Attacks on people with albinism in East Africa are not random. They are, according to researchers and advocacy groups including Under The Same Sun, organised, often community-linked, and driven by the false belief that body parts of people with albinism carry magical or medicinal properties.
Uganda has seen cases of abduction, mutilation, and killing of people with albinism, though precise national statistics remain difficult to establish. Regional data compiled by Under The Same Sun has tracked hundreds of reported attacks across Sub-Saharan Africa since 2006, with Tanzania and Malawi accounting for the highest numbers — but Uganda features consistently in those records.
For families with albinism in Uganda, the threat is not abstract. It shapes where children go to school, whether adults travel alone, and how communities understand safety. Activists within Uganda have called for dedicated legal protections, faster prosecution of perpetrators, and sustained public education to challenge the beliefs that drive demand for attacks.
The full reporting by NewVision was not accessible beyond the headline at time of writing. The story's existence in a mainstream Ugandan publication is itself a signal — that editors and journalists in the country are paying attention to a threat that has too often been treated as peripheral news.
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