• Human Rights in Uganda

    After 26 years of President Yoweri Museveni’s rule, ongoing threats to freedom of expression, assembly, and association continue to raise serious concerns. Security forces largely enjoy impunity for torture, extrajudicial killings, and the deaths of at least 49 people during protests in 2009 and 2011.  The government banned a political pressure group calling for peaceful change, obstructed opposition rallies, and harassed and intimidated journalists and civil society activists working on corruption, oil, land, and sexual rights. The notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill, still proposing the death penalty for some consensual same-sex activity, looms in parliament. The law criminalizing torture went into force, though challenges to prosecutions persist.

  • © 2011 Human Rights Watch
    Uganda: Stop Harassing the Media
    The Ugandan government should immediately end politically motivated police intimidation of newspapers and radio stations and ensure that the media can operate freely.
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Uganda

  • Where Obama Isn’t Going
    Jun 30, 2013
    President Barack Obama’s second presidential visit to Africa kicks off in Senegal, with stops in South Africa and Tanzania. This is a good regional mix highlighting the development and governance successes that are likely to be main themes of his trip. Senegal’s peaceful political transition is additional incentive.
  • Africa: Obama Visit Should Stress Media Freedoms
    Jun 25, 2013

    United States president Barack Obama should use his visit to Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, beginning June 26, 2013, to support besieged media outlets and independent groups across the African continent.

  • Uganda: Museveni's 10,000 Days in Power
    Jun 18, 2013
    On 15 June, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, joined the ‘10,000 Club’, a small coterie of world leaders who have held power for over 10,000 days – more than 27 years. In Africa, only Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola have remained in office longer.
  • Repressing Rights While Talking Law in Uganda
    May 24, 2013
    “The police [are] working within the parameters of the law,” Uganda’s information minister, Mary Karooro Okurut, told journalists on Monday in Kampala, hours after police had forced two newspapers and two radio stations to shut down while they conducted a search – and kept them shut. After years of documenting human rights abuses in Uganda, including threats to free expression, I was not impressed by her words. Her claim that the day’s events were grounded in law only further illustrated the government’s emerging practice of citing laws to justify repression.
  • Uganda: Stop Harassing the Media
    May 20, 2013
    The Ugandan government should immediately end politically motivated police intimidation of newspapers and radio stations and ensure that the media can operate freely.
  • Uganda: No Justice for April 2011 Killings
    Apr 25, 2013
    Police and prosecutors in Uganda have turned a blind eye to the killings of at least nine people by security forces during protests in April 2011. Human Rights Watch issued a video in which relatives of the victims explain the impact on their families and their struggle to secure justice and compensation.
  • Statement before the CRPD Committee on the Day of General Discussion on Women and Girls with Disabilities
    Apr 17, 2013
  • UK Should Show Leadership on Sexual Violence in Somalia
    Jan 31, 2013
    A Somali woman who said she was raped by state security forces, a journalist who interviewed her, her husband, and two others who tried to assist her, have been charged with multiple crimes, including insulting a government body. They face a court hearing on February 2. The journalist is sitting in a Mogadishu prison right now. All of them – including the woman herself – could face years of prison in the war-torn city if they are convicted.
  • The disabled often are denied information about sex and HIV
    Dec 1, 2012
    Over a billion people — 15 percent of the world’s population — live with a disability. These numbers should confer power and authority in decision making about all aspects of their lives, including to HIV and AIDS. Yet people with disabilities have been largely ignored in the global response to HIV.
  • Election 2012: Rights and Responsibility
    Nov 5, 2012
    The candidates may disagree on some human rights issues, but the next president will face challenges that transcend partisan lines.
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