KAMPALA – The Alliance of Women Advocating for Change (AWAC) a sex work-led organization has created awareness to their grassroot human rights defenders about the offline and online human rights guidelines.
Developed with support from UN Women, the guidelines are aimed at equipping their grassroot human rights defenders with relevant knowledge while doing their work.
Kyomya Macklean, Executive Director, AWAC Uganda explained that these defenders include; women with multiple vulnerabilities, women using and injecting drugs, sex workers, women living with disabilities, women living with HIV, women operating in the oil city (Hoima) – all working and advocating for human rights but do not know what to do especially on issues of pay, working environment and expression of freedom of space.
“We are sensitizing them on when do you know your rights are being violated, when using gadgets like phones and computers what do you expect. When your rights are violated, what procedures can you follow, who are the stakeholders they can work with.”
She noted that oftentimes, several sex workers are attacked and killed mysteriously – giving an example of the recent killings between October 24th, 2023, and February 5th, 2024 in Sembabule, Wakiso, and Kampala Districts including; Madrine Nakuya, Flavia Ajuka, Mulungi Annet, Mastula Nabasirye, Nimusima Edith, Nakatudde Shamim, among many other, totaling to about 21. Since then, she says no justice has been rendered to their families.
Mr. Edward Mwebaza, Deputy Executive Director, Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum noted that oftentimes, human rights defenders have been attacked and violated and this has never been concluded even by police.
He said that it is an obligation of state to promote, protect and fulfil human rights and human rights defenders are just doing a complementary role to ensure that the country respects values and promotes human rights.
“But because there is a lot of abuse of civic space, human rights defenders also find themselves in situations of being attacked and violated.”
“My organisation has been broken into twice. In the first incident in 2016, attackers came, killed our security guard and opened our offices but interestingly didn’t take anything. We reported to police and kept pushing for a report and the last thing we got to know was that our file was lost. In 2018, we suffered the same case which almost ended the same way,” he revealed.
According to him, the Uganda National NGO Forum report shows that over 50 NGOs have been broken into and none of them has a report from police.
“Majority of these NGOs are human rights organisations. This injures the safety and security of people who are complementing the government to promote human rights.”
“We call up the government to pay attention to these cases and release these reports. Imagine cases reported by organisations are not worked on, what will happen to individual human rights activists,” he wondered.
Mr. Mwebaza also decried too many compliance obligations that now NGOs have been subjected to.
He says an NGO is by law required to first be incorporated as a company. “That alone gives you a lot of obligations, you have to file annual returns.”
“After, you have to be registered by the NGO Bureau and obtain a permit but also you have to file annual returns. There is Financial Intelligence Authority which also you have to register and file annual returns. I have learned that we have file returns to the Data Protection Office. All these are government institutions, meaning that you are filing annual returns to the government all those times but also you subscribe to district NGO monitoring committee, meaning in every district you go to you have to have a memorandum of understanding, you can imagine. All those bureaucracies serve to fail the work of NGOs.”
The recently released report indicated that most Non-Governmental Organizations have low trust in their regulators including the National NGO Bureau, the Financial Intelligence Authority – FIA, Kampala Capital City Authority – KCCA, Uganda Registration Services Bureau – URSB and the Uganda Revenue Authority – URA.
During this year’s edition of ‘Talk to Your Regulator’ symposium, Dr James Nkuubi – Executive Director, Network for Public Interest Litigation noted that there is a deep mistrust with both the regulators and NGO players being skeptical about the activities of the other.
“We have found misgivings, for example about the Financial Intelligence Authority because it doesn’t give feedback even when you file because some people believe they are being targeted even when there is no particular examples that have come up since Uganda came up with laws of NGOs caught in money laundering or terrorism.”
He revealed that the district NGO monitoring committees is the least trusted largely because they are not funded, and sometimes they come up with their own rules.
The report indicated that the NGOs are increasingly progressing on best practices, for example, on the data protection office who carry out a number of meetings with civil society.
Lazurus Mukasa – deputy head of FIA urged the NGOs to guard against money laundering and terrorism financing to ensure that bad elements do not destabilize the country
He noted that although the risk rates in the sector remain low, there have been attempts to send illegal funds to an NGO
“The results show that all NGOs broadly were at low risk of terrorism financing but few specific categories were identified to be at a higher risk than the rest. NGOs which operate teachings of the Quran but also NGOs which operate in areas of insecurity have high terrorist threats.”
Stephen Okello – Head of the National NGO Bureau advised the NGOs to do capacity building at all levels but also to recruit compliance officers.
“If you don’t have a compliance officer and you think CEO is the one to remember each and everything, then you are going to always find yourself on the other side of the laws.”
