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Uganda’s partnership with BRICS+ is bad news for human rights, experts warn [1]
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Date: 2025-01
This month, BRICS+, the intergovernmental organisation of “emerging” economies,
named for its founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has officially admitted Uganda as a “partner state”.
BRICS+ is an aspiring counterforce to the dominance of the world’s largest – and Western – economies. Uganda’s admission to the group, at a step below “member state”, promises the East African country a strong economic and political relationship with its members, which recently expanded to include Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.
Uganda has long been lauded as a key regional ally for the West, especially on matters of security. But analysts told openDemocracy that this relationship has now effectively suffered a “separation” as common interests dwindle, the 40-year rule of 80-year-old president Yoweri Museveni reaches its twilight years, and the anti-homosexuality law further isolates the country diplomatically in the West.
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In the context of this deteriorating relationship, political experts and activists told openDemocracy that they believe partnering with BRICS+ may benefit Uganda economically. But they also warned that the move could largely absolve the country of the need to adhere to upholding human rights – a commitment typically required by partnerships with Western economic groups.
Last year, the Washington-headquartered World Bank froze new lending to Uganda after it passed the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality law, saying the legislation was against the bank’s values. The US and UK governments have also sanctioned several Ugandan public officials over their involvement in corruption scandals and gross human rights violations.
Human rights or economic development?
Members of BRICS+, including Russia, Iran and China, typically rank low on global democracy indexes created by Western groups. The 2023 Democracy Index report by the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit, the research and analysis division of the Economist Group media company, rated six of the group’s ten member states as authoritarian, and the rest as “flawed democracies”. The index classified Uganda as a “hybrid” regime, with a mix of authoritarian and democratic elements.
BRICS+, however, it would seem wants its members to uphold democratic ideals. The 2023 Johannesburg Declaration, adopted at the ninth annual BRICS Summit under the chairship of South Africa, had member states agree to “protect and fulfil human rights in a non-selective, non-politicised and constructive manner and without double standards”.
Yet declarations signed by BRICS+ members are not legally binding, while partner states have no voting or signatory powers but can contribute to proposals.
As Uganda enters the campaign season ahead of its general election early next year, the country, Amnesty International suggests it is not protecting and fulfilling human rights as the BRICS+ declaration laid out – instead living up to its authoritarian credentials.
In November, veteran opposition leader and four-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye was arrested in Kenya, whisked to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and charged with unlawful possession of arms. A Ugandan military court has since ruled that Besigye can also be tried for treachery, for which he could face the death penalty if convicted.
Amnesty International described the circumstances of his arrest as an “abduction” and a “clear violation of both international human rights law and the process of extradition with its requisite fair trial protections”.
And just last week, Besigye’s lawyer Eron Kiiza was sentenced to nine months in prison by the general court martial for ‘contempt of court’, after a heated verbal exchange in the court premises. This was despite the fact that trying civilians in military courts is against Uganda’s constitution and international law.
“Uganda joining the BRICS+ means an increased lack of accountability for a country riddled with human rights violations,” according to Ugandan human rights and feminist lawyer Maria Alesi, who was concerned by what some analysts have said is the group’s prioritisation of economic growth over human rights observance.
“There is no evidence to show that the protection and promotion of political and civil rights hamper economic growth,” she added.
Further, both the Johannesburg Declaration and the 2024 Kazan Declaration, which was signed by member states at the 2024 BRICS+ summit in Russia, use the phrase “African solutions for African problems”. This principle is rooted in the belief that Africa must be able to exercise control over its affairs free from Western interference, yet the group has little to say about BRICS+ members’ involvement in local socio-cultural politics and support for anti-rights movements in Africa.
Russia, for example, has been accused of championing homophobia in Uganda, with a 2024 investigation by the US-based Wall Street Journal finding that Russia’s embassy in Kampala made a $300k donation to Uganda to host lawmakers from across Africa for a conference on how to resist Western pressure on issues such as gay and reproductive rights. The Russian ambassador denied making this transfer and Russia has denied all involvement, including allegations that it pushed for the passage of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
“It is flawed for the anti-rights groups to push for an African framework to protect African values including family values, because Africa is not a homogenous place, it has diverse people with differing lived experiences,” said Joy Asasira, a Ugandan human rights activist, in an interview with openDemocracy.
Okello Oryem, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs, expressed wariness over concerns from the country’s civil society groups about Uganda’s partnership with BRICS+. “We are not inclined to anybody. We don’t owe allegiance to anybody in particular. We’re an independent, sovereign pan-African country. We don’t take lectures from East or West,” he said in a phone interview with openDemocracy.
“Those [human rights] organisations are mouthpieces and representatives of Western propaganda. We just let them do what they want, but we know they are agents of the West,” he added.
‘Left with no alternatives’
BRICS+ partners and member states often claim to stand in defiance of Western dominance. But for Uganda, joining the bloc is not a power move, says Oryem, claiming the West has left the country with no choice but to look increasingly towards the East.
The minister explained: “For many years, there was a sense of international order, but recently, the West has started foolish unilateral intimidating, unilateral coercive tactics against other countries. They’ve left other countries with no alternatives.”
Ugandan political analyst and journalist Angelo Izama echoed this, telling openDemocracy that Uganda’s decision to partner with the BRICS+ group is a consequence of its declining common interests with the West.
“The repositioning of Uganda’s relationship with the West vs the BRICS+ is a consequence of that relationship no longer being as vital to either side,” he said. “It may not be a divorce but it's something of a separation at this point.”
Uganda’s relationship with the West was strengthened in the 2000s through its support for the US’s so-called ‘war on terror’, but has slowly been coming apart at the seams in recent years.
Since 2007, Uganda has deployed more troops than any other African nation to a peace-keeping project in Somalia – backed by the UK, the US and the UN – which intended to push back Islamist fundamentalist group Al-Shabab. That project is expected to end this year, despite the Ugandan government warning that the Somalia government is not ready to stand on its own. Uganda plans to stay longer in Somalia, although it remains unclear who will foot the bill for this.
In reality, though, Uganda’s image as a solid regional security partner has always been connected to financial gain.
Since the late 1990s, the country has deployed thousands of troops to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Officially, these soldiers are there to curb instability spill-overs and prevent rebel groups – such as the Islamist-leaning Allied Democratic Forces, which have been linked to sporadic terrorist attacks in western Uganda – from crossing the border. Yet Uganda’s forces have been found guilty of plundering Congo’s forests and minerals. In 2022, the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court of Justice ordered Uganda to pay Congo $325m in reparations for the illegal looting and the deaths of 10-15,000 people between 1998 and 2003.
Uganda’s relationship with the West has been further worsened by Museveni’s son and heir apparent and commander of the defence forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Kainerugaba is known for his occasional tirade of bizarre tweets in which, to put it mildly, diplomatic mishaps are common. In October, he tweeted an ultimatum – which he later recanted – to the US ambassador, telling him to apologise to his father for “disrespecting” him or leave Uganda in three days. While it is not clear why the ultimatum was issued, it came in the same week that the US issued sanctions against four Ugandan police officers accused of torture against civilians.
But what are the real economic benefits?
At first glance, BRICS+ appears to promise small African economies such as Uganda less interference in their internal affairs and a focus on aiding their economic development. But within the group, trade relationships remain highly varied and imbalanced.
Uganda’s exports to Russia were a mere $15m in 2021, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), while it imported $202m from the country. Around a quarter of this ($48m) was spent on arms, making Uganda East Africa’s top arms importer from Russia. Vladimir Putin’s $100m gift to the Uganda People's Defence Force last year – a sum equivalent to 10% of Uganda’s defence budget – was a nod to the two countries’ common security interests.
Meanwhile, Uganda imported over $1.5bn from and exported $105m to China last year, making it one of the East African nation’s biggest trading partners. This seems to be part of China’s colossal Road and Belt Initiative (RBI), which spans more than 150 countries, 44 of them in Africa.
But the ties between China and Uganda run deeper than trade alone. Around 25% of Uganda’s debt burden is money owed to bilateral creditors (government agencies that make loans to other governments or public entities), of which 18.1% is from China, according to a 2022/2023 debt sustainability report by Uganda's finance ministry. Concerns have been raised about China’s “debt trap diplomacy”, which is intended to increase African states’ economic dependency on China, putting them in the same position that the East claims to be pulling them out of.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which joined BRICS+ as a member state in 2024, was Uganda’s largest export partner in 2022, according to the OEC. In that year, the most recent for which the OEC has data, Uganda sent the Middle Eastern nation $1.22bn worth of goods, of which gold made up $1.19bn.
The UAE is also home to the largest concentration of Ugandan diaspora in the Middle East: over 150,000 predominantly young people, many of whom are involved in semi-skilled work. There is evidence that these Ugandan youths, especially those working in the domestic sector, experience rape, torture, having their wages and travel documents withheld, human trafficking and even murder.
It seems that Uganda’s future as a BRICS+ partner state lies at the intersection of opportunity and caution. In the meantime, though, Uganda still depends heavily on Western aid, receiving more than $640m from the US and $40m from the European Union each year. Most of this money goes towards the country’s health sector, refugee programs and infrastructure.
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