Press releases Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Bachelet and Ugandan Government sign new agreement on UN Human Rights country office

10 February 2020

GENEVA / ADDIS ABABA (10 February 2020) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Sunday signed a new agreement with the Government of Uganda maintaining the presence of a UN Human Rights office in the country for the next three years.

Bachelet and Uganda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sam K. Kutesa, signed the agreement at the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Addis Ababa.

The signing of the agreement maintains the presence of the UN Human Rights Office 14 years after it was first established in Uganda. The High Commissioner noted that much progress has been made during the course of those 14 years, but said her office is ready to continue to assist Uganda on other areas where more progress is still required.

Under the new agreement, the Uganda Country Office will undertake a range of activities including:

  1. Advising and assisting the Government of Uganda on policies, programmes and measures for the promotion and protection of human rights in Uganda;
  2. Strengthening the capacity of human rights institutions, civil society organisations and other relevant actors to promote and protect human rights;
  3. Advising and supporting the Uganda Human Rights Commission in the implementation of international human rights norms and standards and outcomes of the human rights ‘mechanisms’;*
  4. Monitoring the human rights situation in Uganda in partnership with the Uganda Human Rights Commission;
  5. Providing training activities on the international human rights system for Government officials of interested States in the region, as well as national human rights institutions and civil society organisations.

 

ENDS

*Human Rights ‘mechanisms’ include the UN human rights Treaty Bodies; the individual UN independent experts known as Special Procedures; as well as the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council -- a peer review of the human rights records of every UN Member State that takes place once every four years. 
For more information and interview requests, please contact: Rupert Colville (+41 79 506 1088 / rcolville@ohchr.org); or Renato Rosario de Souza (+ 41 22 928 9855 / rrosariodesouza@ohchr.org) 
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