Uganda, the country which Winston Churchill once considered to be the Pearl Of Africa, is today mostly known for it’s cruel dictatorship and nasty civil war. A place where human rights are violated on a day to day basis. Because human rights are not part of editorial policies and lack of specialization as well as limited knowledge about human rights amongst journalists, there is a lack of media coverage. This coupled by a deliberate move by the state to openly abuse rights using newly enacted draconian legislations like the Public order management Act, the Anti Homosexual Act, the Regulations for Interception of Communications Act among others have seen the slump in governance and democracy in Uganda.
Our partner in Uganda has first hand insights into this, which is why we’ve set out to collaborate in order to better enable independent quality investigative and advocacy journalism, in a time when many media organisations face censorship or are politically owned and hence commanded to undertake self censorship. The project will seek to undertake various knowledge development, through skill and capacity building of existing gaps, but also to stimulate new and creative reporting approaches especially through video journalism.
They are already working to expose the corruption and documenting human rights violations in Uganda based on the interventions currently underway regarding the unprecedented mass land grabbing cases in Uganda which practice is going unchecked or reported With the members of Story4change’s long experience from creating documentary film for broadcast and internet, the two partners are sure that this project will successfully empower the Ugandan journalists in order to prevent corruption and violation of human rights in Uganda and also contribute to desired nurturing of democracy during the general elections come 2016.