Uganda's parliament has voted to commit troops to the proposed International Stabilization Force for Gaza, the multinational deployment envisioned under President Trump's Board of Peace plan [1]. The plan, announced in February 2026, imagines a force of roughly 20,000 personnel that would move into Gaza behind Israel's phased withdrawal under the October 2025 ceasefire [1]. The force would be commanded by US Major General Jasper Jeffers [1].
That force does not yet exist as anything more than a proposal. It has no soldiers of its own; it is only whatever contributing governments agree to send, which is why a vote in Kampala matters to a plan drafted in Washington. Uganda joins Morocco among the nations that have pledged so far [1].
Defense Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka argued for the commitment by pointing to Uganda's peacekeeping record in Somalia, where its soldiers have served for years under the African Union mission [1]. The pitch was continuity: a country that has done this kind of work before, stepping into another.
The vote did not pass without argument. Opposition lawmaker Hassan Kirumira pressed a question that went to the heart of the mission, asking, "On which side is our army going to fight?" [1]. His concern centered on Uganda's membership in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and what it would mean for a member state to send troops into Gaza [1].
That objection is the part worth holding onto. The Board of Peace force is being built the slow way, parliament by parliament, and each approval is a separate political decision made under domestic pressure. Uganda's debate shows that the pressure is real and that the outcome inside a contributing country is not a formality. The mission also still hinges on a condition outside any of these parliaments' control: Israel's withdrawal, phased and not yet complete, is the event the whole deployment is timed to follow [1].
