• 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

  • 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.
  • Uganda: Protecting Civil Society Helps Preserve Basic Freedoms
    Sep 25, 2012
  • UN: Set Plan for Women, Children With Disabilities
    Sep 11, 2012

    Governments meeting at the United Nations about the needs of women and children with disabilities should develop a clear plan of action to promote and uphold their rights. Among others steps, they should make a commitment to address the needs of women and children with disabilities through international development programs.

  • Human Rights for Women and Children with Disabilities
    Sep 11, 2012

    There are an estimated one billion people, or 15 percent of the world’s population, living with a disability, according to the World Health Organization. Despite this, people with disabilities face barriers to inclusion and their needs are often given low priority. Women and children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to discrimination. They experience multiple discrimination—both from their disability and their age or gender. In many parts of the world, it is common practice to isolate, abuse, and deny basic human rights to these particularly vulnerable groups.

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