While appearing before the legal and parliamentary committee, the chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission Mrs. Mariam Wanagdya told the commission how Uganda was denied access to human rights meetings in Geneva, Switzerland.
This comes after the closure of the United Nations High Commission For Human Rights offices in 2023 after the government refused to renew their contract of operation.
Mariam also denied accusations that the commission remained silent when the government refused to renew the operational contract of the commission.
She said ” “I wish you knew what we went through, the battles we fought so that this office would stay and the meetings which were held and the last one was in Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended by Cabinet Ministers, I was invited. I had written several petitions, trying to make a case for the office to stay. Actually, I was lectured, that is what it (meeting) turned out to be. I was lectured on why this office must go and I must not be an obstacle. And these were decisions taken by Government, other than pleading that let this office stay, there was nothing more we could do.”
She further revealed how our human rights status is going to be downgraded come June this year since we no-longer have neutral entities to oversee our works in terms of securing the rights of our people.
The chairperson also denied allegations that the commission she leads is in favour of the ruling part (The National Resistance Movement).
On this issue she said ““You observed that the Commission isn’t keen on listening to the concerns of people with views opposing Government and that the current leadership of the Commission is the yellowest or the most cadre-ish I have been hearing these sentiments. If that was the case, how come under my leadership, Government stopped funding? So how come, when its cadre is now at the helm, Government hardly gives a penny, only UGX 400M for operations.”
The fact is that the closure of these offices greatly affected the human rights image of our country since the Democratic Governance Facility, an organisation that was funding most of the human rights work in civil society was stoped by government to do it’s works in Uganda.
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