UF To Dedicate Human Rights And Peace Center In Uganda

December 8, 1997

GAINESVILLE — As the world observes Human Rights Day on Wednesday, Uganda, a country recovering from decades of bloodshed and oppression, is scheduled to host U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright for the dedication of a human rights and peace center founded by University of Florida law and anthropology professors.

A UF delegation led by Vice President Karen Holbrook will gather with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and other Ugandan officials at Makerere University in the capital city of Kampala to dedicate the Human Rights and Peace Center.

The culmination of years of work by a group of dedicated academics in Uganda and Florida, the center is a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary experiment to change the ideas and hopes of Ugandans and other Africans regarding human rights.

“This institution is a commitment to human rights and the rule of law that is beginning to flourish in Uganda,” said UF law Professor Winston Nagan, co-founder of the center. “This partnership has produced a success story that overcomes the negative publicity about human rights in Africa. It is a success story that illustrates that positive interventions in human rights are possible and effective.”

Samuel Tindifa, a member of the law faculty at Makerere, recently spent three weeks at the UF law school teaching a course in human rights and constitutional development. Tindifa, 42, was born in Uganda and witnessed the destruction wrought by dictators Milton Obote and Idi Amin. Having worked with the center since its inception, he said he also has seen the positive changes it has brought to the country. Along with educating law students, the center reaches out to the community to teach citizens about human rights and what the institute can do for them.

Beyond its efforts in legal education, the center strives to make a difference in the

lives of all Ugandans, many of whom have no concept of human rights or their implications. “The problem we have in Africa is disempowerment of the community because they’re ignorant about their rights,” Tindifa said. “You can have human rights spelled out in the constitution, but as long as people are ignorant about them, they are useless. So, knowledge is very important.”

Tindifa and others have been looking forward to Wednesday’s dedication of the new building, which many at Makerere have come to call “The Florida House.” “It will be a very special day,” Tindifa said. “We are ready to take off.”

The genesis of the center was a 1988 workshop conducted by Nagan, UF law Professor Fletcher Baldwin, UF anthropology Professor Ronald Cohen and UF political science Professor Goren Hyden at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. The workshop was titled “Governance and Human Rights in East Africa.”

“At that time, Uganda was going through an extremely difficult period with an ongoing guerilla war,” said Nagan, former chair of the American Section of Amnesty International. “No one had any inkling that we would ever be thinking of going down there.”

During the workshop, the UF delegation discussed with representatives from the law school at Makerere University the idea of developing a human rights and peace center in East Africa. By 1991, the idea began to move forward.

“The idea seemed almost quixotic in 1991 that you’re going to establish a peace and human rights institute in a country that’s gone through every conceivable vestige of hell,” Nagan said. “These people looked over the brink and caught a glimpse of Armageddon.”

But with a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Nagan, Baldwin and UF anthropology Professor Peter Schmidt began a five-year project to develop the center.

During that time, numerous UF faculty and students from diverse disciplines lectured at Makerere, and faculty and students from Makerere came to UF for training. Along the way, they started the East African Journal for Peace and Human Rights, and Makerere University created an independent academic department of peace and human rights.