Rights advocates and campaigners have criticized the Ugandan government’s plan to close the nation’s UN human rights office and describing it as “shameful”.
Ugandan had stated that it will not extend the mandate of the United Nations human rights office in the East African nation in order to create its own adequate capacity to monitor rights compliance.
In a letter dated February 3 and obtained by Reuters on Wednesday, Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the country’s decision was primarily motivated by the country’s progress in building internal capacity to monitor rights.
The letter read in part according to Reuters; “The ministry wishes to convey the government’s decision not to renew the mandate of the OHCHR Country office in Uganda beyond the current term.”
Speaking for the OHCHR Uganda country office, Bernard Amwine told Reuters that he had nothing to add.
Over the years, the opposition, human rights advocates, and Western nations have criticized President Yoweri Museveni’s administration for a variety of rights breaches, including torture, unauthorized detentions, and extrajudicial executions of critics and opponents.
Nearly all of the charges have been refuted by officials, who also claim that all security officers involved in rights violations have received the appropriate punishment.
Museveni informed Al Jazeera in December 2022 that several arrests were the result of “some mistakes [in] mishandling people while they were being arrested but we corrected those mistakes.”
Uganda has been ruled by the 78-year-old since 1986, when he took office following a five-year conflict. He has been charged with preparing his son, a general in the nation’s military, to succeed him, according to the opposition and opponents.
Museveni has, however, vehemently refuted this accusation.
According to researchers, the president’s retention of power has been largely due to a system of political patronage that includes a national network of district commissioners who are devoted to him.
The Ugandan government claims that the OHCHR Uganda office was first given permission to concentrate primarily on human rights issues in conflict-ridden regions of the country’s north and northeast when it was created in 2006. Later, the remainder of the nation was permitted to be covered.
