Wangadya notes that despite the complaints raised on rights violations, the commission has made strides in ensuring that the level of rights abuses is scaled down including its perpetrators being held liable.
The
Chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) Mariam Wangadya has
said that it is impossible to completely wipe out human rights abuses in
Uganda.
Wangadya's statement comes against the backdrop of numerous reports raised by
members of the public on the continuous human rights violations perpetrated by
the armed forces in the country.
She says
just like other crimes, human rights abuses are committed by individuals right
from homes and various places which makes it hard to be stamped out at
once.
Wangadya however notes that despite the complaints raised on rights violations,
the commission has made strides in ensuring that the level of rights abuses is
scaled down including its perpetrators being held liable.
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Wangadya made the remarks on Wednesday while addressing journalists on the
sidelines of a training of trainers Workshop for prison officers from Lango and
Acholi sub-regions in Gulu City. The training was organized by the Office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in conjunction
with UHRC.
She however reiterated concerns that whereas cases of rights violation continue
to be registered in the country, the commission is unable to comprehensively
undertake an investigation on complaints due to underfunding.
Wangadya particularly highlighted that as a commission head, she has inadequate
facilitation which has since affected her efforts to visit detention facilities
across the country where right violation complaints have been raised. She says
the limited financial resources have in a way affected the commission’s
performance.
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Wangadya called on the government to support the commission with more funding
to ensure it conducts comprehensive conducts its constitutional mandates.
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Kamadi
Byonabye, the Director of Research, Education, and Documentation at UHCR says
financial resources are very crucial to the promotion and protection of rights
in the country which the commission lacks.
He notes that a greater percentage of the budget the commission gets goes to
recurrent expenditure leaving out the core mandate like inspection, human
rights education, and investigating human rights violations.
In the financial year 2021/22, the government allocated only 20.89 billion
shillings to the commission out of 72.2 billion Shillings it required.
The training which attracted mid-level and senior prison officers from the two
regions follows an assessment conducted by OCHR and UHRC that found glaring
knowledge gaps on human rights among armed personnel.
Robert Kotchani, the outgoing OHCHR Representative in Uganda says despite many
efforts that have been made at the legislative level, there still remains a big
gap among armed personnel on the changing legislative framework regarding the
treatment of inmates, suspects, and convicts.
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Kotchani says they expect the officers at the end of the three days of training
to observe zero tolerance for torture, and ill-treatment of inmates and ensure
that inmates enjoy their rights as enshrined in the national, regional, and
international legislation.
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The Regional Prisons Commander for Aswa Margaret Orik lauded the initiative to
train the officers who will in turn train other officers at their various duty
stations. Orik says whereas rights violations can’t be denied as happening in
prison facilities, there has been great improvement lately which has seen the
rights of prisoners being observed.
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According to
the UHRC annual report of 2021 released in June this year, the Uganda Police
Force (UPF), topped the list of human rights violators in the country with a
total of 354 complaints (54 percent) registered against them.
This was followed by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) with 135
complaints (21 percent) and 15 complaints (2 percent) registered against Uganda
Prisons Service.
