Create rights awareness

We need to look at this year’s human rights day theme holistically. For instance, while the rich should be taxed to subsidise the poor, the grim reality is that some of the rich, especially those that have political connections, are rarely taxed. The practice is that it is the poor who are taxed and their taxes are enjoyed by the rich.

Today, Uganda joins the rest of the world to mark the Human Rights Day under the theme “Inclusion and the right to participate in public life”. This year’s theme denotes that every human being must be included in decision-making and must have a role to play in public life. While Ugandans participate in public life directly through casting their votes and indirectly through their representatives, the purpose of their participation remains unfulfilled.
Today, poverty incapacitates very many Ugandans by frustrating them from fully participating in decision-making. With selfish political leaders, the poor have no voice since they can hardly attain quality education and if they do, they can hardly get meaningful employment.

Sadly, State institutions which should create a conducive environment for the citizens to participate fully in public life are the ones used by those in power to sustain exclusion.
We need to look at this year’s human rights day theme holistically. For instance, while the rich should be taxed to subsidise the poor, the grim reality is that some of the rich, especially those that have political connections, are rarely taxed. The practice is that it is the poor who are taxed and their taxes are enjoyed by the rich.

Higher education now is a preserve of the rich; when it comes to health, the poor live by divine intervention and when it comes to employment, graduates with good grades languish on the streets while “Nasser Road graduates” get lucrative jobs. The government has taken too far the biblical verse in Mark 4:25 that “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

Part of the reasons for exclusion and deprivation or denial of the right to participate in public life is that the national human rights institution has never made any efforts to educate Ugandans about their rights. That explains why the Constitution has never been translated into local languages and disseminated.

Commemorating Human Rights Day without sensitising citizens about their rights and giving them tools to demand them from their leaders is worthless. It is high time the Uganda Human Rights Commission and all other rights organisations launched a serious campaign to raise citizens’ civic competence.

Mr Nuwagaba is a human rights defender. vnuwagaba@gmail.com