200 Shillings IYDP

The International Year of Disabled Persons, declared by the United Nations for 1981, prompted a wave of commemorative issues from member states — Uganda among them. The country was barely two years removed from the fall of Idi Amin's regime when this coin was struck, with Milton Obote having returned to power following the 1980 elections widely criticized as fraudulent. That the Bank of Uganda was commissioning silver commemoratives for an international humanitarian program while the country remained in acute political and economic crisis says something about how these UN-driven issues functioned: largely as foreign currency earners sold to collectors abroad rather than coins intended for domestic circulation.