In cooperation with Ministry of Local Government The Democracy Team has developed Module 27 of the Ministry's training modules.
The module "Democracy and Human Rights" contains a Participants handbook and Trainers handbook.
The final testing took place at sub county and district level at Nakasongola District, Bukedea District, Kirihura District and Gulu District.
GULU
Read here what happened in Gulu.
NAKASONGOLA
In Nakasongola the participants at district level started by defining and describing democracy in their own words.
Let’s give a few examples:
“Democracy is the rights of everybody to participate in everything that affects them”
“In democracy there are no beggars” (RDC)
“Where there is democracy there is development”
“In democracy there is no perfect government”
The workshop at district level was very lively from the very beginning to the very end. It was even sometimes difficult for the facilitators to calm the group, - everybody wanted to express their opinion and everybody wanted to discuss more on the different issues!
Only few women participated in the general discussions, but were much more active during group work.
Some of the discussions gave food for thought:
“Central will tell you that tomorrow we don’t give you this anymore. The Local Governments just keep quiet and that is a problem”
“We have been independent since 62, but are we really when we are still depending on grants?”
The testing workshop was closed by the RDC with the following words:
“This has been one of the most interesting workshops we have ever had since I started. In future let’s go to the villages and share with them”
Bukedea
We went to Kidongole Sub County where people without any doubt could have continued discussing if the sun had been up all night.
“This democracy is a tool. It creates a forum to discuss important issues which would only be discussed on the street”.
The information shared seemed to be of greatest importance. LC5 Sam Ebukalin expressed with surprise: "This brings out issues which you will never even find through inspections".
And again – food for thought:
“I saw this animal called democracy. I don’t seem to understand it much. How does human rights and democracy relate?”
“The people are living holistic, but the educated have been in a small faculty and only know this small faculty. Those are the ones we need to capacity build on how to deal with real life”
“We have left our communities to be beggars. How do we change them to be customers?”
“We realized that the sub counties didn’t have data. How can they then plan for the different areas?”
“Do we have leaders, rulers or managers in our community?”
“Does decentralization function when there are a high and a low class? The low class live in the poor houses, drink the bad water etc. Does it work when some people from above come and tell us what to do. They tell us that we don’t have the capacity, so they will do it for us. They use a lot of money for payment which could have been done much cheaper.
We HAVE capacities; we can run our own families, we can build houses.
We have had capacity building many times, but we are still looked upon as we have no capacity”
“There is no democracy at household level. Women and children work, while the men are doing nothing. The little we earn the men will take. There is lack of information, the men sell crops and land without consulting.”
“If a girl misbehaves the mother is the guilty one. The father gives her away and if the mother objects, they will tell her that she is guilty of the mess”
“Formally PTA has a role, but on the ground they have no function”
“These human rights have brought us problems. Now the children demand for their rights and end up misbehaving. And how about our women; - how can we now control them!”
“Is it abuse of rights to put 80 or more in one class? Do they get their right to quality education fulfilled? Can you expect one teacher to make quality education for so many – even with not enough equipment?”
And comments about the module:
“The beauty of these documents is that it brings together democracy and human rights into local governments. You can use it in church, family etc.”
You can tell the ministry that we welcome this module” (CAO, Bukedea District)
