Uganda has seen a spike in the number of human rights violations from 4,220 in 2016 to 5,021 in 2017.
The chairperson of Uganda Human Rights Commission, Meddie Kaggwa on Friday morning handed over the 20th Uganda Human Rights Commission Annual Report on the state of human rights in Uganda to the Speaker of Parliament.
“The increase in the number of people that sought the services of UHRC might have been because UHRC had intensified its human rights education activities. None of the total number of complaints received, 682 were registered as complaints raising alleged human rights violations. Men registered higher complaints 523 women 221 out of the 734 are mostly always in conflict with the law,” Mr Kaggwa said on Friday morning.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga commended the Commission for fulfilling their mandate and covering all the sectors. “Thank you for ably covering the Maragoli community, the solution is to amend the constitution so that the other indigenous tribes are also included,” Kadaga added.
She said that there is need to amend the Constitution to include all the other indigenous tribes in Uganda. She urged the committee chairperson to take up the report and flag it before the house and also called on the commission to also investigate why crime is higher in the greater Masaka compared to other areas.
Kaggwa pointed out that they are constrained to execute their duties because of underfunding and compensation is a challenge.
The Report recommended that Uganda should facilitate food security to enable full realization of the right to food and to protect her people from hunger, it found that although Uganda has been ranked as one of the best palliative care providers in Africa, a big percentage of Ugandans in need of palliative care cannot access it, and yet there is a growing need for the service that is also a human right, right to a fair hearing in the criminal justice in Uganda in 2017, the right to security of person and increased occurrence of violent crimes, emerging human rights concerns in 2017, land disputes and human rights in selected regions of Uganda among others.
Kaggwa called on Parliament, especially the Human Rights Committee, to up their oversight role in the promotion and protection of human rights in the country.
The Human Rights committee chairperson and Woman MP for Mitooma district, Jovah Kamateeka advised government sectors to desist from engaging in torture of Ugandans because they will not be given money to run their activities by Parliament and if found to have tortured, money for compensation will be deducted from their budget.
