Monday, February 10: Global Day of Action Against Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill

BY SUSAN FARNSWORTH
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GLOBAL RIGHTS

On Monday, February 10, Global Rights and dozens of other human rights organizations will participate in an international “Day of Action” against Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. 

This global advocacy campaign was initiated by the Ugandan Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitution Law, a coalition of 51 Ugandan human rights groups that was formed in 2009 to prevent the passage of the anti-homosexuality bill.

The notorious “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda was first introduced in 2009 but was quickly shelved due to international pressure. England and other European nations threatened to withdraw international aid if the bill became law. U.S. President Barack Obama called it “odious.”

Regrettably, however, the anti-gay bill did not disappear. Reintroduced without the death penalty clause, the bill passed with a majority vote in the Ugandan Parliament on Dec. 20, 2013. The bill includes life sentences for persons convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”

The good news is that the bill has yet to become law, and we concerned human rights advocates can play a role to ensure that it never does.

As part of the planned events for February 10, Global Rights and other rights groups will hold a demonstration from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. in front of Ugandan Embassy, located in Washington at 5911 16th St, NW. We and the other participating organizations have also launched a social media campaign to galvanize support to strike down the draconian bill. We encourage you to join the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #stopAHB.

As was evident in 2009, the international community holds immense power to shape Ugandan legislation and safeguard the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons in Uganda. We at Global Rights strongly believe that in our role as human rights advocates, we must defend the rights of all marginalized groups, whether they are LGBT persons, women, or ethnic and religious minorities.

We are currently working with LGBT-rights advocates in Cameroon—where more people are prosecuted for being gay than anywhere in the world—to strengthen legal assistance for people charged or convicted for homosexuality.  In Sierra Leone, we are working with LGBT- and mainstream rights organizations on an advocacy campaign to advance the rights of LGBT individuals.  Our work in Sierra Leone is largely informed by the first-ever report about the discrimination faced by the Sierra Leonean LGBT population, which we drafted in collaboration with our local partner organizations.
 

Thirty-eight of Africa’s 54 countries have laws against homosexuality. Brave people there are fighting for equality, but they can’t do it alone. We encourage you to spread the word about the Ugandan bill and to help ensure that all Africans—irrespective of gender identity and sexual orientation—receive equal treatment under the law.

Ugandans Air Concerns About New Oil Industry

BY DON RUKARE
GLOBAL RIGHTS COUNTRY DIRECTOR, UGANDA

HOIMA, Uganda—Multinational oil companies are not likely to start tapping Uganda’s 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil reserves until 2018, but community leaders already have begun to address concerns they have with Big Oil’s plans to set up operations in their communities.

This week, Lien De Brouckere, Global Rights director of natural resources and human rights, and I traveled to the Albertine Graben districts of Hoima and Bullisa in southwest Uganda to meet with leaders in the communities where oil companies Tullow and Total plan to set up their operations.

Despite the excitement about the potential economic benefits from a profitable oil industry, local leaders identified several concerns they have with oil companies drilling near their communities. Many community members feel that they are largely unaware how the oil industry operates and how the new Ugandan oil industry will affect them. There are also concerns about whether people will be properly compensated for their land and crops that they will have to abandon to make room for the the refinery and related infrastructure. Even if people are compensated monetarily, they lack the knowledge how to use the money to start a new life once they leave their homes. Other issues include the exclusion of groups such as women, the elderly, persons with disabilities and youth; the lack of skilled laborers who could actually work in the refinery; and challenges immigrants from other African countries encounter when claiming rights to the land around the planned oil refinery. 

Lien De Brouckere discusses concerns about the nascent Ugandan oil industry with local community leaders

About 65 percent of Ugandans live on less than $2 per day and only 8.5 percent of Ugandans have access to electricity, according to the latest World Bank statistics. Ugandans see their oil reserves as a way to alleviate these societal problems, but the country lacks the resources to build the infrastructure needed to extract and refine the oil. Consequently, the country has struck deals with multinational oil companies Tullow, Total and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which have begun laying the groundwork for operations but won’t start drilling until 2018.

In addition to meeting with local leaders, Lien and I also met with government officials, civil society leaders at the national and local levels, representatives of oil companies, and religious and cultural leaders—all of whom have a vested interest in creating a profitable oil industry in Uganda.

From these discussions, it is clear that there is still a lot to do to create awareness within the communities on the pros and cons of the oil industry. This needs to be done in a collaborative, inclusive and non-confrontational manner, preferably at the village and parish levels. Another viable option is community-based dialogue that brings together all relevant parties—civil society, the Ugandan government, and oil companies—including marginalized groups such as women, people with disabilities, the elderly and youth. It is also vital that the media, in particular the local radio hosts, disseminate appropriate messaging to the wider community. In addition to radio broadcasts, we need to design informational material about the oil business and land laws to then distribute to the people whose lives the oil refinery will impact.

Next week, we travel back to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, to meet with central government officials, oil company officials, civil society organizations and national conflict-resolution consultants. Following these engagements, we will write a report to assess the situation and that will include our next steps and future program to address these issues.

Our meetings in Uganda are part of a five-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) aimed at building peace and mitigating conflict among ethnic groups over competing claims to land and oil. Global Rights is working in partnership with the National Center for State Courts and Search for Common Ground.

African Organizations Band Together to Tackle Rights Abuses Linked to Business Activity

In Tanzania, improper management of a foreign-owned gold mine led to high levels of arsenic in a main water source for a local community. In Nigeria, local townspeople have received little or no compensation from companies responsible for oil spills that have poisoned drinking water and destroyed crops and livestock. In Kenya, 60,000 indigenous people who were evicted from their ancestral lands decades ago still wait for the Kenyan government to compensate them for what they lost.

Tanzanian man affected by poisoned drinking water, a result of negligent management of a foreign-owned gold mine.

Dozens of African human rights organizations fight every day for the rights of these disempowered and often vulnerable people. However, for most of these organizations, the fight is fought alone.

Unlike their counterparts in other regions, organizations based in Africa that tackle human rights issues related to business activity had never formed a broad coalition. They had never spoken with a unified voice.

That changed in late November 2013 when Global Rights brought together in Ghana representatives of 25 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from sub-Saharan Africa to have them share their experiences and knowledge and form a broad coalition that would foster more information sharing and solidarity. As a result of the meeting, the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA) was launched. Coalition members identified the most pressing issues they face in their work today and articulated these in a declaration, which they then presented in December at the United Nations Second Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva.  Civil society leaders from across the world in Geneva praised the establishment of ACCA, and many other human rights groups around the world have already reached out to support the fledgling coalition—all signs that point to the power ACCA has to shape the corporate accountability agenda across Africa.

Representing a unified front, ACCA members will now have more bargaining power when lobbying corporations and their governments to properly address existing and potential human rights violations. In the declaration, ACCA Members emphasize four primary areas of concern for their constituencies and communities.  The first is the need for enhancing protection and respect for collective and individual rights in relation to the activities of business enterprises. One issue, in particular, is that businesses and governments frequently bypass communities entirely when planning the construction of a new operation, such as a mine. For example, from 1973-1986 the Kenyan government forcefully evicted about 60,000 indigenous people called the Endorois Community to make room for a ruby mine and a game reserve. The community was never consulted.

The second main concern is the need to enhance protection and respect for labor rights. ACCA members represent people who work in extremely hazardous conditions for very little pay. In Zamfara State in Nigeria, for example, more than 500 Nigerian children who worked in gold mines have died since 2010 from lead poisoning contracted at the mine.

Another pressing concern is the lack of effective and accessible means for victimized communities to seek redress for human rights violations perpetrated against them. Even if these methods exist, there is little or no assurance that the government or responsible companies will actually follow through with their obligations. For example, the African Human Rights Commission ruled in 2010 that the aforementioned Endorois Community deserved to be compensated by the Kenyan government; however, the community members have not had their land returned to them nor received proper financial compensation.

Finally, many African states fail to enforce their own laws, whether they are inscribed in their own legal codes or in regional or international conventions to which they are signatories. The United Nations, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the constitutions of many African countries include laws related to the protection of the environment, the rights of indigenous and minority populations, and other human rights-related laws that were put in place to avoid or remedy the very issues that communities in all regions of Africa currently face.

In our next steps, Global Rights will continue to work with the ACCA members to help them use their new, unified voice to more effectively lobby their governments and engage with companies to address these critical issues.

Global Rights and the members of ACCA are thankful for the continued support for this initiative from organizations that include: Human Rights Watch, the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, the Centre for Research on Multilateral Organizations (the Netherlands), and Natural Justice: Lawyers for Communities and the Environment (South Africa).

Mining in Afghanistan: Huge Economic Gains At the Expense of Human Rights?

The government of Afghanistan is desperately looking to revenue from its mineral wealth—valued at least $1 trillion—to replace the foreign aid currently bankrolling the country, claiming that the sector will provide more than 500,000 new jobs and 50 percent of the country’s gross domestic product by 2030.  In the short term, the revenues are to come from oil fields in the north and smaller gold mines, but in the long term, revenue is to come from the country’s two largest known deposits:  the Aynak copper deposit worth an estimated $46 billion in Logar province, and the Hajigak iron ore deposit worth an estimated $340 billion in Bamiyan province. 

Aynak communities were forcibly resettled five years ago when development of the copper mine started, but since a rocket attack by the Taliban in August of last year, the Chinese state-owned company operating the mine has halted all work.  A consortium led by an Indian state-owned company has won the tender for the Hajigak deposit, although no development will take place until the consortium has secured funding.  Another key stumbling block for any mineral development in Afghanistan is resolving the critical question of infrastructure to transport the minerals out of the country, including geopolitical concerns for agreements to build railroads or pipelines; oil in the north is today being exported by truck through Turkmenistan. 

Whether small- or large-scale, government-licensed or insurgent-operated, the human rights price tag of mineral development in Afghanistan will be high unless the right steps are taken now. Left unaddressed, the environmental, social and human rights costs to Afghanistan’s people—and especially local mine-affected communities—of such massive economic development could be unjust and irreversible.  Without a foundation based on good governance and social justice, this key to economic sustainability runs a high risk of increasing conflict and insecurity in an already fragile country, in turn threatening the very economic returns the government desperately seeks and needs.

In January, local civil society organizations and resource-rich communities organized and joined forces to form the Civil Society Natural Resources Monitoring Network, with a mission to pursue the goal of promoting effective, transparent, balanced, sustainable, and peaceful utilization of natural resources for economic and social development of Afghanistan.  It was one of the Network members, Afghanistan Watch, which invited Global Rights’ Director of Natural Resources and Human Rights, Lien De Brouckere, to Afghanistan in early November to train local civil society organizations, members of resource-rich communities, as well as geologists and minerals experts on the social and human rights impacts of large-scale mining, and various strategies to manage mining-related issues.  After a four-day training in Kabul, Lien traveled with Network members on a field visit to listen to resource-rich communities in Bamiyan province, including those in Bamiyan city, the village of Syadara, and Hajigak.

This province also has a rich cultural history and is the site of the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.  The network members met with Bamiyan civil society organizations, where community members were concerned about corruption, security and whether mining would actually generate new jobs for them.  Network members also traveled for several hours to the more remote village of Syadara to meet with community council members, stopping on the way to visit former small-scale marble and iron ore sites, as well as another of Afghanistan’s natural jewels, Band-e-Amir, a stunning lake in a mountainous area that showcases Afghanistan’s natural wealth and beauty.

Communities around the Hajigak mine have vowed not to let what happened at Aynak happen to them, and civil society activists from Logar are generously sharing their experiences and lessons with Hajigak and other community members, all coordinated through the Network in an attempt to bridge the information gap between Kabul and the other provinces. 

Front and center for any civil society or community member with whom Lien spoke was the issue of security. Past troubling incidents and other security concerns include: Aynak communities’ forcible resettlement by soldiers in armored vehicles that resulted in two deaths; recent beheadings of several provincial leaders and kidnapping of foreigners in Aynak; insecure roads to Hajigak where engineers have disappeared over the past few years; threats to human rights defenders from government, business and insurgents; US-supported commercial extraction of chromite by Afghan Local Police in Kunar province; ethnic conflict resulting from laborers who come from other provinces; and  general worry about what will remain after NATO forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.  

Corruption was another major concern cited repeatedly, and Transparency International’s latest report  released Tuesday has a three-way tie again with Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia for most corrupt country in the world.  These corruption concerns touch all aspects of resource governance, including the tendering process, employment and training opportunities, contract negotiation, government independence, political leaders owning private companies, and misusing recruitment of mine workers for fraudulent voter registration in the upcoming elections.  

Aside from security and corruption, civil society and community members also voiced grave concerns about local hiring.  For instance, at the Aynak mine it was promised that at least 70 percent of newly created jobs would be reserved for people from Logar; however, today only one manager at Aynak comes from Logar.  Many other concerns were also voiced, including concerns about whether the government and foreign companies will consult with communities about the mining process. (It is incredibly telling that communities around Aynak, civil society organizations and provincial council members only learned through the media that the contract for Aynak had been signed.) Other concerns pertained to land tenure and property rights (especially resettlement, and absent or woefully inadequate compensation), impacts on women, a host of social and environmental concerns, adequate working conditions, and rampant child labor.  

Global Rights has a wealth of experience working with local communities that have suffered injustices at the hands of the extractive industry.  Today, we are working in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda to increase the knowledge of civil society, host communities, industry, and government officials about the human rights implications of the extractive industries that are, in part, fueling Africa’s current economic growth. We have also worked in the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea, where we helped local organizations monitor violations in extractives operations, and trained them on their economic, social and cultural rights.

Global Rights will continue to monitor the status of mining in Afghanistan. We welcome the opportunity to continue working with Afghan civil society to raise awareness in the country about land rights and to connect Afghan organizations to our broad, international network of community organizations that are engaged in the same human rights work.

New Report: Global Rights' 13-year Journey Advancing Women's Rights in Morocco

For 13 years, Global Rights worked with local women's organizations to advance women's rights in Morocco. Through various seminars, workshops and training sessions, we directly reached about 65,000 Moroccan women. 

A demonstration in support of Amina Filali, a 16-year-old Moroccan girl who committed suicide after she was forced to marry the man who raped her.

During one initiative in 2009, we and our partners met with 2,000 women from 33 different cities, towns, and villages during a three-week trip to spread awareness of Violence Against Women (VAW) legislation that we and our partners drafted. We then lobbied the Moroccan government and the United Nations for the legislation to be adopted into Moroccan law.

We began our work in Morocco in 2000 intent on raising women’s awareness about their rights and providing them the tools and knowledge to defend these rights. The overarching goal was to create a broad and influential women’s rights movement; it was up to the country’s emerging women’s groups to chart the movement’s course. After more than 12 years of activism, the situation of Moroccan women changed dramatically. Throughout the country, many individual women and women’s groups learned skills about grassroots mobilization, articulating the case for women’s rights, and working patiently and strategically with government at both local and national levels to improve their status and position in society. The report documents how Global Rights worked with the women of Morocco to effect this dramatic change. It is also a tribute to the power of civil society and to the indomitable will of those who take risks and work tirelessly every day to assert their rights.

Global Rights Releases New Report on Human Rights Abuses of Afro-Brazilian Trans Women

An LGBT person was murdered every 26 hours in Brazil in 2012.

Among the more than 300 murders , more than half were trans women.  Moreover, from January 2008 to December 2011, there were 826 reported murders of trans persons worldwide, and 426 of them occurred in Brazil. In 2013, there have already been 251 deaths of LGBT persons in Brazil, which include trans women.

Against this backdrop of unspeakable violence, Global Rights, in close partnership with Brazilian trans activists, professors, and local human rights organizations, produced the first-ever comprehensive report on human rights violations against Afro-descendant trans women in Brazil, who suffer discrimination for being trans and black. Global Rights and our partners presented the report October 29 to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The report, information for which was collected from July 2012 to March 2013, revealed that Afro-descendant trans women in Brazil experience chronic human rights violations including racial discrimination, transphobic and racial violence, and arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by police officers and individuals. Furthermore, they receive inadequate access to education, employment and healthcare because of racial and gender-identity biases. Estimates are that 90 percent of trans women in Brazil are functionally illiterate, and many Afro-descendant trans women find sex work as their only way to earn money.

“Racism is a thing that traverses all strata of society…A person already grows up knowing that black is ugly, that black smells, and black is not worth anything…and for black transsexuals, it would be an even greater problem. And if she doesn't have the looks of a woman, the problem, it would be even greater because she causes nausea in people,”

said Alessandra Ramos, a coordinator for Grupo Pela Vidda Rio de Janeiro, a group that was founded in 1989 to support people in Brazil with HIV and AIDS.

Currently in Brazil, there is no law that specifically prohibits acts of discrimination or violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender. The Brazilian Constitution, however, does outlaw racial discrimination and protects the cultural and religious rights of ethnic minorities, including Afro-Brazilians. In addition, Brazil established in 2010 the National Council for Combating Discrimination, a special council formed within Brazil’s human rights commission to combat discrimination and promote and defend the rights of LGBT persons.

Brazil also permits same-sex marriage. The country’s National Court of Justice ruled on May 14 that marriage licenses cannot be denied to same-sex couples. However, like in Argentina, which also has progressive laws for LGBT persons—including a law that allows individuals to change their gender identity on official documents—conservative societal attitudes toward LGBT persons often clash with the progressive spirit of the law, particularly in rural areas.

Furthermore, the fact the Afro-descendant LGBTI movement in Brazil is relatively small, unorganized and nascent adds to the difficulty of protecting the rights for the community. The movement lacks funding, public support and resources, and it does not receive enough support from the government or other civil society organizations to compensate for its lack of financial and public support.

Global Rights views this report as the first step in a multi-step process. After having identified key issues facing Afro-descendant trans women in Brazil, Global Rights will now work to build and train the fledgling movement to more effectively advocate for and protect its marginalized community. Specifically, we will work to foster more collaboration between Afro-descendant trans women and other Brazilian human rights groups, like those that advocate for women, Afro-descendants and LGBT persons. We will also work with local organizations to document human rights violations and then present our findings to human rights commissions at the state, regional and international levels.

Live video today at 12 pm: Afro-Colombians Push for Inclusion in FARC-Colombia Peace Talks

Despite the relative progress in the Colombia-FARC peace process, the conflict continues to leave a disproportionate scar on Afro-Colombian communities. As negotiations progress in Havana, Cuba, mass displacement has continued along the primarily Afro-descendant Pacific coast; 2012 saw a 22 percent increase in displacements compared to 2011. Despite bearing the brunt of Colombia’s conflict, though, Afro-Colombian voices have been notably absent from the ongoing negotiations. Watch this live event, where two noted Afro-Colombian leaders will share their perspectives on the conflict and chart how Colombia can include some of its most marginalized voices in the talks.

The event will be streamed live today at 12:00 p.m.