What the Governance and Security Report Counted
Five hundred and twenty-three. That is how many times Ugandans living and working abroad contacted their government for emergency help during the 2025/26 financial year, according to the state’s own Governance and Security Program report, released in Kampala on Friday. Ninety-six. That is how many of them were repatriated. Fewer than one in five of those who called for help were brought home.
The report presents the figures as an achievement. “The government also responded to 523 cases involving Ugandans in distress and facilitated 96 repatriations, demonstrating continued attention to citizen protection and welfare abroad,” it states. Read the other way, the same numbers describe hundreds of citizens who reached out from difficult situations overseas and whose outcome the report does not record.
The gap matters because the risks facing Ugandans who work abroad have become more visible this year. The report does not say where the callers were or what had gone wrong.
What the Report Leaves Out
As published, the report omits the critical details. It does not set out the nature of the emergencies, the host countries where citizens found themselves trapped, or the reasons only 96 people were repatriated. Without that breakdown, it is impossible to tell whether the remaining cases were resolved in other ways, abandoned, or still open.
The report also notes that delivery of general consular services fell below target. At the same time, the government expanded its diaspora engagements to 22 events, against an annual target of eight. “While the volume of general consular services was below target, the response to distress cases, repatriation and diaspora engagement demonstrated continued government commitment to citizen protection and diaspora mobilization,” it says.
The contrast is telling. The state exceeded its target for diaspora events almost threefold while missing its target for the consular services that citizens in trouble depend on. Outreach to the diaspora and protection of the diaspora are different jobs, and the report suggests the first is easier to scale than the second.
Watching the Recruiters
The interventions were supported by the External Security Organization, Uganda’s external intelligence agency, which monitored labor export processes, recruitment agencies, and immigration flows. That role reflects a recognition that many problems begin at home, in the hands of agents who send workers abroad on terms the workers may not fully understand.
The report does not say what the monitoring found or whether any recruitment agencies were sanctioned. But the involvement of a security agency signals that the government treats labor migration not only as an economic matter but as a question of national security and citizen protection.
The Contrast with July
The distress-call figures sit uneasily beside the scale of an emergency operation earlier in the year. In July, the government deployed chartered Uganda Airlines flights to evacuate 1,102 Ugandans from South Africa free of charge, after a wave of xenophobic violence, anti-immigrant protests and targeted security threats.
That evacuation showed that the state can act at scale when a crisis is concentrated in one place and draws public attention. The 523 individual calls are a different kind of problem: scattered, individual and often invisible. Responding to them requires consular staff, legal support and funds for individual tickets, the routine machinery that the report itself says fell short of target.
Security Gains at Home
The diaspora figures are one part of a wider report that also details domestic security and justice metrics. The national crime rate fell from 501 incidents per 100,000 people in 2023/24 to 427 in 2025/26. The ratio of police to population improved slightly, from one officer per 945 citizens to one per 893, and the sub-county policing model now reaches 93 percent coverage.
The National Identification and Registration Authority assigned National Identification Numbers to 34.37 million citizens, roughly 74.8 percent of the estimated population. Some 14.2 million identity cards were renewed and 8.9 million new citizens registered. Security agencies recruited 21,746 personnel and trained or retrained 55,810 officers, and command-center CCTV networks monitored 7,591 incidents and supported 1,686 specialized investigations.
The report also warns that state agencies remain constrained by inadequate capacity to respond to cyber threats, transnational crime, maritime security, fire emergencies and growing demand for specialized technology. It concludes that performance across the sector’s nine main objectives remained uneven, citing gaps in international cooperation, refugee resilience programs, gender compliance and public service delivery.
Speaking at the launch, Hajj Yunus Kakande, Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President, tied the figures to national stability. “Without peace, we shall achieve nothing,” he said.
Protecting Citizens Beyond the Border
A state’s duty to its citizens does not end at the airport. Countries that export labor earn foreign exchange and relieve pressure on their own job markets, but they also take on a responsibility to the people who go. Uganda’s report shows the government can count the calls for help. The harder test is whether it can answer them.
Publishing the host countries, the types of emergencies and the outcome of each case would allow Parliament, families and civil society to judge whether the system works. It would also give Uganda firmer ground in negotiating labor agreements with destination countries. Real control over labor migration means setting the terms on which citizens leave and making sure that, when things go wrong, more than one in five of them can come home.
