Makerere University Rights and Peace Centre Launches Program to Respond to Rights and HIV/AIDS Challenges

KAMPALA—The Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) based at Makerere University in Kampala has launched a new program to train lawyers on the links between human rights and HIV/AIDS.  With support from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), HURIPEC is training 25 lawyers from four countries of the East African Community.

The two-week course, which is being taught by experts from Africa and the United States, targets new law graduates and lawyers in the public and private sectors, and in civil society.  The program seeks to create a pool of lawyers with knowledge and skills to effectively respond to emerging HIV/AIDS and human rights challenges in the region. It aims to increase activism on the rights-based approach to health, promote transparent and accessible health and rights policies, and develop basic and policy-oriented research in the areas of human rights and HIV/AIDS. 

 What: Lawyers, academia and health and rights experts training law, human rights and HIV/Aids at the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC).

 When:  May 4-15, 2009

 Where:  Makerere University, Conference room at the Department of Women and Gender Studies

 Who: Dr. J. Oloka-Onyango, HURIPEC director, and professor of law, Makerere University

Jonathan Cohen, director, Open Society Institute Law and Health Initiative

Ibrahima Kane, director, Open Society African Union Advocacy; and professor of law,  University of Essex

Dr. Sylvia Tamale, former dean, Makerere University Law School

Anne Gathumbi, Health and Rights Manager, Open Society Initiative for East Africa

The Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) is a department at Makerere University's Faculty of Law in Kampala, and is East Africa's oldest academic body devoted to research and publication of human rights and peace issues. HURIPEC has conducted trainings and disseminated research in a variety of areas including economic, social and cultural rights, governance and decentralization. Its flagship journal, the East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, provides a focal point for critical and incisive research on all spheres of human rights in the East African region and beyond.

The training was organized out of recognition that despite significant developments in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in general, there is still a lacuna in the teaching and dissemination of knowledge about the link between HIV/AIDS, law, and human rights in the Eastern Africa region.