My experience in Uganda and working for the Human Rights Centre Uganda (HRCU) has been overall an incredible eye-opening, fulfilling and life-changing experience. Even though I am only halfway through my placement, I can see that it is helping guide me through thoughts of what to focus on in the future and what aspects of development I want to focus on in life.
My workload has been steadily growing and the type of tasks given to me have with time been more tailored to my areas of interests in human rights. I began with reading all relevant literature and material published by the HRCU to gather as much understanding as possible about where I would be working for five months. I also luckily began working for them on the same week as their annual conference, the Human Rights Defenders Annual Forum, which gathers all the human rights defenders (HRDs) that they support and protect from all over Uganda together to discuss relevant issues and further build the capacity of their work.
I have also attended two fieldwork activities: one in Masaka, one in Gulu. The training in Masaka was for local leaders in human rights law and the human rights approach. The activity in Gulu (near the border of South Sudan) was a community dialogue amongst the local leaders, police, stakeholders, and general public on the topic of the anti-torture law and the public order management act. These experiences enabled me to learn on the ground what human rights are like in Uganda and also take part in the planning and running of activities with the public and powerholders in Uganda.
Within Kampala I have attended other activities on behalf of HRCU. I take notes of what is being discussed by all participants and compile activity reports on returning to the office with all the information captured. These activities include: a stakeholders networking meeting on legal and institutional environment for promotion of constitutionalism in Uganda; a roundtable meeting on good governance and accountability in electoral democracy in Uganda; the World Press Freedom Day march through Kampala city centre; and the Light For the World ‘Make 12.4% Work’ disability inclusion conference. These have all allowed me to learn more about human rights in Uganda, what is being done to improve them, and further helped me explore where my interests lie for future work through engaging with participants at these activities.
For the past month, I have been developing a template and format for a weekly activity updates newsletter. This newsletter is produced by me at the end of each week for display on the notice board in the office. I also take minutes at the weekly programmes meeting and staff meeting. I have reviewed and edited various reports to be published by HRCU. I also planned and facilitated the team-building exercises and the Work-Life Balance workshop at the HRCU’s critical reflection meeting in April.
Finally, I have been involved in writing website articles for the HRCU website. I have written one on World Press Freedom Day 2019 and am currently developing two topics of particular interest to me and that I feel the HRCU does not focus enough on within their work. These topics are drug policy and harm reduction in Uganda and LGBTI intersectional activism in Uganda. I have organized and attended meeting for research purposes for these topics and am currently writing up these topics into the draft website articles.
International Development Placement 2019 