Internship at the Foundation

June- July Interns with Mr. Livingstone Sewanyana at the Human Rights House

 If you have been to the University for an under graduate course, you probably did Internship either after your first or second year. In most Universities across the country, Internship is mandatory and is usually done after second year.   An internship is a method of on-the-job training for white-collar and professional careers. Throughout the year, the Foundation receives a number of interns from various Universities and countries. Over the years, the Foundations internship programme has greatly grown. Here is what some of our current Interns had to say;

Nakanwagi Rita Catherine, PILAC LAW student from Makerere University attached to the Legal Service Devision (LSD);

“The experience during my internship at FHRI under LSD has been worthwhile because it gives hand on experience. It’s not every day that an intern gets to conduct mediation or follow up cases and actually close them.” July 2013

Is it the professionalization of the army or the militarization of the country?

By Crispy Kaheru, Coordinator – Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU)

President Mugabe of Zimbabwe

As I wander in Uncle Bob’s land of the Zimbabwe, I continue to keep a very close eye on the way things are unraveling back in my much-loved Uganda. The riots have become as common as the potholes; arrests on account of trumped-up charges are as widespread as Boda Bodas on Kampala road; and all this is in a place where freedom of expression (for independent opinions) is as limited as the jobs for Ugandan graduates.  

My brothers and sisters, there is no other time that has called for braveness like this time!  It is acts of bravery that will define who we are and what we want for today and tomorrow. Recalling the words of famous French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “each act contributes to defining us as we are, and at any moment we can begin to act differently and draw a different portrait of ourselves”.

Social mobility, the labour and education puzzle

By Jon O’Kane

Before engaging in any discussion on labour and labour rights, it is important to ask the question: why do we work?  The very idea of labour can be viewed in many different ways.  Individually, a person may work to do something they love, support their families, or follow their passions.  Collectively, members of society work and are compensated for the contributions they make to each other. 

Economists argue that generally, people are paid more money for greater contributions to what society needs.  If you build a useful tool, you will be paid accordingly.  Looking at the labour scheme as a whole, a healthy economy thrives when individuals are able to, through self-motivation and financial reward, give back to society.

Still, economics is very abstract and cannot be easily expressed in just a few sentences.  The idea that the free market can allow for the most efficient way to distribute wealth and accomplish societal goals like supply and demand is, I argue, oversimplified.  A perfect free market would have the best carpenter doing carpentry – but in practice, he or she may never have the opportunity to learn the trade.

Engaging employers in search for parity

By Steven Tendo, Journalist

 

Too many times, debate rages over abused rights of workers in some organization, usually in the media. The battle lines are usually drawn between the adversaries but the battles usually leave only the workers bruised, with battered rights.

Kinyara Sugar Works is one of those organizations beset by problems seemingly beyond those of other like companies. The tinderbox beneath the sugar producer is left open and dangerously close to embers, leaving it in constant danger of a bust up.

If it is not casual labourers, it is out growers angry about money paid to them. 

In August 2010, casual labourers were reported to have brought KSW to a halt over alleged nonpayment. The angry mob razed the factory canteen and vandalized a Tata lorry.

Also among valuable items that were destroyed were a computer, a tent and documents belonging to Post Bank in the KSW enclosure.

A strike by out growers led to the burning of about 10 acres of cane. Apart from the obvious loss to the investors at the sugar plant, the whole country experienced a shortage of sugar supply for a long time.

Managers at Kinyara believe that trade unions, far from being a stabilising agent, cause conflict. The fights between the different unions that are vying for the workers at the factory are believed to be disrupting cohesion and therefore disorganizing labour.

Lessons in Death Penalty

By Patricia Nattabi, Law Student, Makerere University 
 

When I was young, the thought of someone dying was a very repulsive thing for me. It was a thing of nightmares, where something dark and evil took away from me those people that I loved and made the people I loved sad. It was the cruel invasion of my happiness and I could never understand why these people had to just leave. For awhile the need to blame someone ignited this irrational fear in me for going to sleep in the dark because dead people in coffins never open their eyes again and they cannot get up anymore. They would disappear into the ground, alone in the dark. Death was alien to me for a very long time; faraway, difficult to understand and somehow even the grownups could not make it go away. An older me now understands that death is as part of being human as life is. Because you were born, you have to die sometime and you might not know when or how. Death is never a good thing and as much as we may want it to be there is never justice in death.