Our Pillars

Advocacy and Strategic Litigation

In this department, UGANET successfully engaged multiple stakeholders including CSOs, legal practioners, and parliamentarians etc. to challenge some clauses of the HIV/AIDS prevention and Control Act 2013. Some clauses were amended due to this advocacy. UGANET filed a petition to challenge some other clauses that need amendment because of criminalizing PLHIV. UGANET also implemented a CSF project and trained 25 PLHIV district networks in 25 districts in advocacy skills to improve advocacy for services delivery for PLHIV in 25 districts. The networks have continued to share numerous success stories to date of improved service delivery generated from advocacy 

There is limited rights protection by those who are entrusted with the responsibility of protecting citizens. Torture and abuse by state actors is a common occurrence. There are many laws that have criminalizing clauses against people who should be protected by the same laws, while others are disempowering the very target populations that they are meant to protect. For instance, the Disability Act limits some forms of disabled persons from providing evidence in Courts of Law. Some organizations have practices that violate rights of either their clients or staff. Such practices and or policies are not consistent with national and international human rights standards. Such organizations will be targeted and supported to address these gaps. For instance, some organizations have in their human resource policies clauses that encourage them to terminate the employment of staff that are found to be HIV positive. This is inconsistent with the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act, as well as the Employment Act.

The NSP 2015/16-2019/20 has identified structural factors related to issues such as inequitable access to health services, governance, accountability, human rights coordination, stigma and discrimination as some of the drivers of new infection.[i] Table 3 below summarizes the relationship between our anticipated outcomes in addressing the legal and policy environment and the outputs we hope to produce as we engage institutions to be more human rights responsive.

Thank you

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