Legal Empowerment and Social Accountability: Complementary Strategies Toward Rights-based Development in Health?

Citizen-based accountability strategies to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized groups are increasingly being used in efforts to improve basic public services. The latest thinking suggests that broader, multi-pronged, multi-level, strategic approaches that may overcome the limitations of narrow, localized successes, hold more promise. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities, in theory and practice, posed by the integration of two such citizen-based accountability strategies—social accountability and legal empowerment. It traces the foundations of each of these approaches to highlight the potential benefits of integration. Consequently it examines whether these benefits have been realized in practice, by drawing upon five cases of organizations pursuing integration of social accountability and legal empowerment for health accountability in Macedonia, Guatemala, Uganda, and India. The cases highlight that while integration offers some promise in advancing the cause of social change, it also poses challenges for organizations in terms of strategies they pursue

Advancing Public Health through Strategic Litigation

The law has a critical role to play in advancing public health, particularly for marginalized communities. Yet many countries have laws that undermine public health, do not offer sufficient protection, or are not adequately enforced.Strategic litigation is a test of the rule of law and its proper implementation. It contributes to both the construction and consolidation of the rule of law. It is a key tool for organizations and individuals seeking to ensure better public health outcomes.Advancing Public Health through Strategic Litigation presents six case studies from different parts of the world focusing on various health rights issues and the concerns of affected communities. These studies reveal lessons for practitioners interested in pursuing this work and for funders concerned about justice and health

Open access, open education resources and open data in Uganda

As a follow up to OpenCon 2014, International Federation of Medical Students' Associations (IFMSA) students organized a 3 day workshop Open Access, Open Education Resources and Open Data in Kampala from 15-18 December 2014. One of the aims of the workshop was to engage the Open Access movement in Uganda which encompasses the scientific community, librarians, academia, researchers and students. The IFMSA students held the workshop with the support of: Consortium for Uganda University Libraries (CUUL), The Right to Research Coalition, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), Makerere University, International Health Sciences University (IHSU), Pan African Medical Journal (PAMJ) and the Centre for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD). All these organizations are based or have offices in Kampala. The event culminated in a meeting with the Science and Technology Committee of Parliament of Uganda in order to receive the support of the Ugandan Members of Parliament and to make a concrete change for Open Access in the country.Pan African Medical Journal 2015; 2

Protecting the Deity Called Neoliberalism from Shame: Uganda’s 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown and Violations of the Right to Health

The Covid-19 pandemic struck Uganda like a storm. On 18 March 2020, President Museveni ordered the closure of schools and suspended religious gatherings, public rallies and cultural meetings with effect from 20 March. This was aimed at safeguarding the right to health in general, and the right to life in particular, of all Ugandans. By 30 June 2020, Uganda had not registered a single Covid-19 death and had had less than 1 000 infections. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, created great panic among the leadership of Uganda’s neoliberal regime. For three decades, the Ugandan state has deliberately underfunded the health sector, using the neoliberal logic that the market will address the challenges of the health sector. The state has treated economic and social rights as mere aspirations and not as genuine human entitlements. Museveni’s regime has rejected pleas from civil society organisations to allocate 15% of the budget to the health sector, as per the Abuja Declaration. The New Public Management philosophy of neoliberalism advocates for public hospitals and health facilities to be run like private-sector enterprises that employ fewer personnel in order to cut the costs of salaries and wage expenses. This article argues that the Ugandan state violated the right to health of Ugandans during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. It contends that the ruthless enforcement of the lockdown in Uganda in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic aimed to protect the neoliberal state from embarrassment occasioned by the prioritisation of markets over people’s social and economic rights

Gender, Judging and the Courts in Africa

Women judges are playing increasingly prominent roles in many African judiciaries, yet there remains very little comparative research on the subject. Drawing on extensive cross-national data and theoretical and empirical analysis, this book provides a timely and broad-ranging assessment of gender and judging in African judiciaries. Employing different theoretical approaches, the book investigates how women have fared within domestic African judiciaries as both actors and litigants. It explores how women negotiate multiple hierarchies to access the judiciary, and how gender-related issues are handled in courts. The chapters in the book provide policy, theoretical and practical prescriptions to the challenges identified, and offer recommendations for the future directions of gender and judging in the post-COVID-19 era, including the role of technology, artificial intelligence, social media, and institutional transformations that can help promote women’s rights. Bringing together specific cases from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa and regional bodies such as ECOWAS and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and covering a broad range of thematic reflections, this book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of African law, judicial politics, judicial training, and gender studies. It will also be useful to bilateral and multilateral donor institutions financing gender-sensitive judicial reform programs, particularly in Africa

Advancing the right to health in East and Southern Africa regional workshop report

The main conversation of the workshop in Entebbe (Uganda) explored regional health systems through the OPERA framework, an assessment process which triangulates Outcomes, Policy Efforts and Resources to make an overall Assessment. This report covers discussions and panel discussions between expert participants. To enhance monitoring, compliance and fulfilment of economic and social rights the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (U.S.) developed a holistic approach and step by step framework known as the OPERA framework. It applies a multi-disciplinary approach that offers practical guidance, tools and techniques, as a critical tool in monitoring state compliance on the right to health

Local Philanthropy in Uganda: A Scan of the Regulatory Environment

This report is produced by CivSource – Africa as the first of two products from a research that was conducted to explore the landscape for philanthropy in Uganda through a case study of five districts, namely Kampala, Masaka, Mbarara, Gulu and Arua. It is a scan of the legal and policy environment for philanthropy in Uganda and addresses three objectives: Explore laws relevant to philanthropy in Uganda, as well as their implications; Describe the regulatory drivers of the constricted civil society space and; Identify experiences of local philanthropists with the regulatory environment