High Court Judge Musa Ssekaana has criticized human rights lawyers for killing genuine and noble causes in the country because of their ignorance about the subject matter.
Speaking at the launch of a human rights book written by Dr. Livingstone Ssewanyana, the founder and executive director of Foundation for Human Rights Initiative on Wednesday, Justice Ssekaana revealed that many good cases that would have set a precedent in this country have been killed by lawyers who are not well versed with the human rights concept.
“Every lawyer who has a degree thinks he is a human rights lawyer just because they know chapter four of the constitution, they go to court and mess up cases because they do not know what they are talking about,” said Justice Ssekaana.
Titled, Human Rights In Uganda, The illusive promise, the book addresses key subjects to ensure full enjoyment of human rights and the building of a democratic state in Uganda.
According to Justice Ssekaana, there are many masquerader lawyers in the field who are outshining knowledgeable activists as they selfishly seek funding.
“It’s important that those who are at the forefront of pursuing human rights causes take the lead and take away the masqueraders who are only looking for funding from donors,” he added.
He expressed optimism that the Human Rights book will improve the quality of judgments given the limited local literature on human rights.
On his part, Dr. Ssewanyana said his inspiration to write the book that has taken him over 10 years to complete is based on leaders who have betrayed Ugandans.
“We are increasingly witnessing so many practices that are anti-human rights, that’s why corruption has grown and leaders do not care about the ordinary people. They give so many promises but deliver so little. It’s a promise everyone has given, even Amin made a promise and successive regimes made promises to the people but it is all a deception, it remains pure deceit,” said Dr. Ssewanyana.
Ssewanyana said human rights in Uganda need more engineering in order to address the current democratic and human rights deficits.
“There is very little in mobilizing the population to stand up against injustices, there is little that is being done,” he said.
He further questions in his book whether the human rights NGOs in Uganda are pretenders or defenders.
