The chairperson of the newly created Human Rights Committee of Parliament, Jovah Kamateeka is promising to be transparent and holding government and its agencies accountable on the human rights front.
She says that government should include human rights components in its activities and during legislation of certain laws. She is hopeful that a lot of work will be dealt with under her leadership.
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The new committee will decongest the work of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee that has been overseeing human rights. The committee had been the one receiving the annual reports on Human Rights status in Uganda. But none of these reports have ever been debated in parliament. The Legal committee was also monitoring the budgeting in the sector.
In March, while amending the rules of procedure of parliament, legislators had blocked a proposal to create a new committee with the Deputy Attorney General Freddie Ruhindi warning that this will create unnecessary bureaucracy and delays in government.
The committee will have an uphill task to ensure that the controversial Public Order Management Bill is passed while observing the rights of Ugandans to assemble as enshrined in the Constitution.
The bill if passed in its current form would give the Inspector General of Police and the Minister of Internal Affairs wide discretionary powers over the management of all public meetings. The bill imposes extensive obligations on meeting organizers, which violates rights to freedom of assembly and speech. The bill would also allow state actors to regulate the conduct and content of discussions. The Constitutional Court has already deemed some of these provisions unconstitutional in previous cases.
According to the Uganda Human Rights Report 2011, security and quasi-military organizations continue to illegally detain and torture suspects, in some instances leading to death. Impunity for human rights abuses persists. The report further stated that government failed to carry out investigations or prosecutions for the deaths of at least 40 people, some by military police, in riots in September 2009.
