Uganda needs a human rights approach – not patronage – to alleviate poverty

Gen Museveni and his cluster, since 1986 when they installed themselves into power, have come up with innumerable poverty alleviation programmes whose failure is hardly disputable. At least every beginning of their term in office, they think up and proffer a particular programme that is often distended with a big budget allocation. 

Unfortunately, these ineffectual programmes have been bottomless pits where billions of taxpayers’ money has been thrown without any proportional productivity. Today, almost 40 years later, impoverishment is still lurking around and biting the majority of the population. 

There is no country in this world that has successfully fought poverty using; brown envelopes; giving out free chicks, goats, heifers, citrus seedlings; and other schemes that are marinated with patronage and discrimination.

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) government must agree that all these – including the youth development programmes,  Parish Development Model,  and Sacco funds, and others which they are planning after 2026, have completely failed because of lack of respect to inclusive human rights. 

The best approach to alleviating poverty is through government respecting the Constitution and realising Uganda’s obligations under the International Human Rights Law and respect of the social contract from which legitimacy to establish a government derive(d)s. 

Many Ugandans, when you talk about human rights,  only think about homosexuality, torture and abductions/political persecution. They do not look at the economic side of it where by the absence of; protection from deprivation of property; adequate standard of living; fair wages; clean water environment; non-discriminative policies; highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; good quality education; right to food; right to political participation; protection of freedom of conscience, expression, assembly and association; right to a fair trial; right to the security of a person, among others, is symbolic of gross abuse of human rights. 

Poverty is a violation of human rights and the importance of addressing economic and social inequalities pursuant to our laws in order to create a more just and equitable Uganda is forgotten in the struggle against poverty pandemic.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) gives a very interesting view that ‘the poor must be free to organise without restriction (right of association), to meet without impediment (right of assembly), and to say what they want without intimidation (freedom of expression); they must know the relevant facts (right to information) and they must enjoy an elementary level of economic security and wellbeing (right to a reasonable standard of living and associated rights)’.

All these rights are properly enshrined within the 1995 Constitution as amended, and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which Uganda is a state party to and has an inexcusable obligation to protect, respect and fulfil. The NRM government must be ashamed that in this generation there are people who sell their belongings in order to access adequate health services and also educate their children in reasonable privately-owned schools. What is the government for if it cannot make sure that the standard of living for citizens is commensurate to their imprescriptible dignity? 

The level of all forms of discrimination, mass looting and corruption augmented by maladministration has imposed a huge dent onto this country and the results are obviously conspicuous in the despicable impoverishment in which millions are encapsulated.

There is no way poverty will be alleviated without people having their freedom and rights respected, protected and fulfilled in accordance with the law. 

Mr Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is a novelist and Master of Laws (LLM) candidate at Europa Universität.  [email protected]