Human Rights Must Not Be Limited To Civil Liberties

First Published by Daily Monitor on Thursday December 10, 2009

Today, Uganda joins the rest of the world to commemorate the Human Rights Day. As we mark this day, we need to take stock of where we have come from; where we are and where we intend to be. This call goes to both government and civil society groups. Indeed since its inception in 1996, the Uganda Human Rights Commission together with other human rights organisations have tried their level best to address human rights issues.

Nevertheless, human rights defenders in Uganda are yet to address the key issues that exacerbate human rights violations. They have largely concentrated on civil liberties and political rights and relegated economic, social and cultural rights; yet these are the cornerstone of the human rights movement for they address the fundamental freedom - freedom from want. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the bedrock of virtually all the human rights instruments we have today, underscores both negative and positive rights. Also, human rights defenders know quite well that the World Conference in Vienna in 1993 affirmed that "all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated" and that the "international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis."

It is noteworthy that during the cold war era, the capitalist bloc favoured the civil and political rights while the socialist bloc favoured economic, social and cultural rights. Are our human rights organisations aligned to the capitalists? Since in the foregoing we have already underscored the indivisibility of human rights, it is only fair that the state is obliged to respect, protect and fulfil economic, social and cultural rights as it does with civil and political rights. In any case, I personally have a hunch that socio-economic rights are the enablers for the realisation of civil and political rights. For instance, people who never get jobs can only enjoy political rights in half measures since they can only vote but rarely be voted since they may even lack nomination fee.

But what is the catalogue of the socio-economic rights that I fervently promote? These rights include workers' rights; the right to social security and social protection in the event of unemployment, sickness, old age among others; the right to an adequate standards of living including the right to food and to be free from hunger, to adequate housing, to water and to clothing; the right to education; the right to health, among others.
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I am happy the President acknowledges health and education to be the most critical sectors. But to what extent has government prioritised these sectors? And how many human rights organisations genuinely promote the rights to health and education? Only last year Kyambogo University was closed for close to a semester, I never saw any press conference addressed by our civil society groups to address the rights of students and parents who were affected by the closure.

This semester, tuition fees in Makerere University were hiked up to 126 per cent (for the record LLB tuition was hiked from 0.6 to 1.26m); MPs following an increase in costs of living raised their emoluments and no single human rights organisation raised a finger. Like Martin Luther King Jr said, our lives begin to end a moment we keep silent over issues that matter. This is a clarion call I make to the government, the Uganda Human rights Commission and civil society activists.

Mr Nuwagaba is a human rights defender