AU’s peer review lets Uganda off scot-free

Yes, educational quality, the use of oil revenues and fertility rates!

It is not that these are not interesting topics to debate.

But, in the bigger scheme of things, they hardly constitute the key human-rights and governance challenges that Uganda is experiencing — or what constructively critical engagement by its peers could presumably be of assistance with.

Which points to yet another problem with the APRM — without clear guidelines for the follow-up reports, it’s possible for states going wrong to get away essentially scot-free, and for the peers to come away feeling they’ve engaged in some sort of generally useful discussion — all without making a shred of difference to the real state of human rights and governance on the ground in the state supposedly under scrutiny.

So much for Uganda. Closer to home, the Secretariat’s chair apparently unilaterally cancelled the second mission of the APRM to Kenya to review the political governance pillar just before the recomposition of the Panel.

And now that the Panel’s recomposed, it’s not clear who’ll be responsible for Kenya.

What is clear, however, it that none of the Panel will have the same background — or the gravitas of the former lead Panel member, Graca Machel. Making a second mission useless in any case.
Something needs to be done.

By our own governments, by governing councils in the region, by citizens trying to use the APRM process to catalyse progress forward.

Or risk seeing it degenerate into meaninglessness, as the AU stagnates too.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission