The commission has one chair and six commissioners. Commissioners are appointed by the president with the approval of parliament for a renewable six year term and can only be removed from office on the same grounds as a judge of the High Court, as set forth in Article 144 of the Ugandan Constitution.69 The constitution requires that the chair must be either a judge of the High Court or someone qualified to hold that position, and that the commission consist of a minimum of three members. The commissioners must be persons of high moral character and integrity.

Under the strong leadership of Margaret Sekaggya, the commissioners appointed to the UHRC have shown a high level of competency in their work. The commissioners themselves are from a varied background - including a former anti-Museveni rebel leader, a priest, a magistrate and a former member of the Museveni government's central policy-making body, the NRC. While some commissioners had significant legal training, most had no prior experience with human rights monitoring. Following the appointment the commissioners received training from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden.

Although President Museveni did nominate competent people with integrity, the process of their appointment was rather haphazard and took place without consultation with the local NGO community. Commissioner Aliro Omara described to Human Rights Watch his surprise when he received an unexpected call asking him to go for a meeting at parliament. When he arrived at parliament, he was informed that the president had nominated him for the UHRC, and was interviewed for about one and a half hours. The nomination was all the more unexpected since Mr. Omara had been a political opponent of the Museveni government, as secretary-general of the Uganda People's Army rebel movement, and had only recently returned from exile in April 1995.70

The nomination and selection process of the commissions did not involve the local human rights groups at all. Leading Ugandan human rights activists with long-standing experience confirmed to Human Rights Watch that they had not been consulted either during the legislative creation of the UHRC or the appointment process. Livingstone Sewanyana, executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), the largest human rights NGO in Uganda, expressed his concern about the process, arguing that in the future the lack of consultation could ultimately undermine the independence of the UHRC and that greater involvement by civil society in the selection process would help ensure that the commissioners would be people of substance and impartiality.71 Mr. Sewanyana also argued that the lack of consultation was indicative of the government's stance towards civil society:

Many of the things which happen in Uganda are state-centered, and government bureaucrats do not see civil society as having valuable input. The state just operates in its own way. When consultations do take place, it is often under pressure from donors. Government does not see us as counterparts, especially in the area of policy formulation.72