By Tausi Nakato
The Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) has reported an improvement in human rights compliance in 18 districts, including in Busoga and Bukedi Sub-regions.
Ms Betty Enangu, the Head of UHRC in Busoga and Bukedi sub-regions, says so far, they are working on only 12 cases of Human Rights abuses since the year began.
“We keep asking ourselves: are there no violations of people’s rights or people don’t report? What is the problem? are they very comfortable?’’ she said ahead of this year’s International Human Rights Defenders Day in Jinja City on Friday (tomorrow).
She, however, added that some of the cases they received that graduate from abuse to criminal were referred to offices of other human rights defenders.
“Although 400 cases came in, the majority of them were referrals. Since Jinja is an Industrial City, we received many labour-related cases and had to refer them to the district labour office. We also referred land dispute cases that graduated to criminal offences to police,’’ she added.
According to Ms Enangu, they only have a backlog of 57 cases, with the oldest being from 2017.
Mr Robert Kirenga, the Executive Director National Coalition for Human Rights Defenders, says they need an enabling environment to execute their work without fear.
Statistics
The highest number of complaints on human hights violations registered by the Commission were against Uganda Police Force at 52 percent (411), followed by private Individuals (147) and Uganda People’s Defence Forces (96) in third position.
This is according to the 2022 Uganda Human Rights Commission Annual Report on the state of human rights and freedom in Uganda.
