In the latest IGC podcast, Mona M’Bikay, Director of UPR Info, and Seth Nimwesiga, Ugandan human rights advocate and IGC Youth Champion, explore the impact of the Universal Periodic Review process on advancing gender equality. They discuss how the UPR holds governments accountable for gender commitments and highlight the critical role of civil society in ensuring these recommendations lead to tangible, on-the-ground changes.
TRANSCRIPT
Hannah Reinl
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the IGC podcast. My name is Hannah Reinl and I'm with the International Gender Champion Secretariat in Geneva. This episode is part of our IGC Youth Champions Programme, which connects 10 Geneva-based Gender Champions with 10 young gender equality activists from around the world. Through this programme we want to promote intergenerational dialogue for gender equality, to amplify the voices of youth activists and to cultivate learning experiences for our established Gender Champions. And it's an absolute pleasure to welcome two of our programme participants to today's episodes: Mona M’Bikay and Seth Nimwesiga.
Mona M’Bikay is one of our Geneva-based Gender Champions and a legal expert specialised in international law, human rights, sustainable development and conflict resolution. She has over two decades of diverse experience in justice, democratic governance and human rights. Her journey has seen her serve the Swiss government and various UN agencies, and since 2017 she has led UPR Info as its Director, a role that she leveraged to champion children's participation and gender equality in the UPR. With her robust background in results-based management and organisational development, Mona has facilitated impactful projects across Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Mona – and these are her words – is a dedicated mother of two who balances her professional commitments with her passion for running, embodying resilience and perseverance in both her personal and professional pursuits. That's beautiful. Welcome to the IGC podcast, Mona.
Mona M’Bikay
Thank you, Hannah.
Hannah Reinl
Our second guest is Seth Nimwesiga. He is one of our Youth Champions and a lawyer dedicated to pursuing gender justice and the right to health for research and strategic litigation. He's based in Uganda at the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development, where he serves as a Policy Advocacy Officer. Seth is also the co-chair of the Generation Gender Global Youth Board, which is tasked with building capacities and streamlining meaningful and inclusive youth participation. He has completed an advanced course on civil society law in Africa from University of Pretoria and is pursuing a Master of Laws degree at Makerere University, Kampala, where he's writing his thesis on the constitutional right to non-discrimination vis-à-vis the penal pathologisation of sexual and gender minorities in Uganda. So clearly two passionate human rights advocates here with us today. Seth, a warm welcome to you as well.
Seth Nimwesiga
Thank you, Hannah, and thanks for having me.
Hannah Reinl
We're really glad that you could join us today and to start us off: I'm really curious to hear what's been your experience with the Youth Champions Programme so far? What is it that you have learned and how do you plan on applying what you've learned as you go forward?
Mona M’Bikay
It has been really a pleasure over the last months to have this conversation with Seth as part of the Youth Mentorship Programme of IGC. I have learnt so much about Seth, about the context in which you are working, about how the UPR can be a tool to advance gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, how to adapt the strategy that we have to advance human rights in a local context and we discussed various issues and one of them was the advocacy strategy to advance gender equality. And also how the Ubuntu philosophy could be applied to advance gender equality and we are planning a project on writing an article together about gender equality and the UPR, it will be really interesting to explore more about the Ubuntu and gender equality. I look forward to the coming months to continue our monthly conversation together.
Hannah Reinl
Great to hear that it’s been such an enriching exchange so far for you, Mona. Seth, what about you?
Seth Nimwesiga
Yeah, equally, it has been a very exciting experience for me as well. First of all, I was very excited to be paired with the expert in the room, the expert on UPR, a process that I'm very passionate about. So the programme itself has given this pair and the mentorship, giving me a deeper understanding of UPR, so I really now appreciate the process – the Universal Periodic Review mechanism – at a deeper basis, because I've been interacting with it. It’s not my first time interacting with the UPR, but through talking to someone with more experiences and who lives and breathes the process, it has given me that deeper knowledge, and I already feel like an expert. I really feel that I'm benefiting from this programme and not just that I understand the UPR, but also given my work, I already told her at the beginning that I was already working with my organisation, was working with other partners in Uganda to ensure that we have the UPR process focused on, and by that my organisation, which primarily focuses on the right to health, did a mapping of recommendations that our country received in the third cycle of the review. And we sort of did some research to ensure that to look at what has been done in terms of compliance or implementation of the recommendation our country received. So we had a report on health-related and gender-related recommendations, so this programme came at the right time when we are just finalised that report and my mentor gave me tactics of how to, you know, maximise the report, maximise the process that we have started through, you know, connecting a bit more deeper research and looking at which countries give these recommendations and you know, engaging some of the embassies in the country to ensure that we follow up the recommendations from the embassies and this we have done together with other like-minded organisations. I used this report and through the leadership of our umbrella organisation, which is called the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders in Uganda, we tried to do an advocacy accelerator to try and push our government to implement these recommendations. So, I'm really benefiting from this process, but also beyond this: I know that it won't stop here. The information I have is too much, the strategies I've learned are too much. So what I'm already doing is to share this information with members of our staff as well as the umbrella organisation and other CSOs to share some of these strategies with them. And I hope to continue doing this to ensure that we are actively participating, say in shadow reporting and everything to do in international advocacy related to this process, so I would really apply this knowledge and I am happy that it was timely that I have this knowledge through participating in this programme.
Hannah Reinl
I'm so happy to hear that you're both getting so much out of our Youth Champions Programme. Sounds like it was a really lucky match! So, we mentioned the acronym UPR multiple times now, which as you just said stands for Universal Periodic Review. Now you're both human rights advocates and experts working quite intricately with the UPR. How effective do you believe the UPR has been as a mechanism in holding countries accountable, particularly when we're talking about addressing gender-based discrimination and other human rights issues?
Seth Nimwesiga
The UPR, whereas it is a global process. Through understanding the process as it is, especially in my country, what I have observed is that the process consistently brings up to light a range of human rights concerns in our country, Uganda. And specifically for gender-related issues that you will hear about, but issues of gender being faced in Uganda, like discrimination, especially against gender diverse persons - say the LGBT community or even just being a woman, which sometimes is not prioritised in the country but through international best practices, through international exposure, we have these countries making recommendations, so human rights are brought to light. They’re brought to light and you know, whereas sometimes when it's extreme and controversial, the government will just note the recommendations, but those that are accepted, we have seen some progress, especially based on the reports that our research that we have done on the implementation of recommendations. But also these recommendations that we have seen that are received enable us now the non-state actors like civil society to pick them up and exert pressure on governments to address where there are human rights abuses, where there are inactions. They help us once we receive these recommendations from as they are given at the country's review we follow them up and have human rights realise, but also maybe to say that the process itself has created a mechanism of dialogue between, you know, government civil society, the international community, to see that everyone's rights are respected, they are brought to light, but they are also focused on, not just sidestepped etc. So, the UPR is very effective, as we have already seen and it creates that space you know for highlighting and addressing human rights situations.
Hannah Reinl
What's your view on this, Mona?
Mona M’Bikay
The mechanism of the UPR has indeed played a critical role in advancing gender equality and women’s rights. Women’s rights are one of the top five issues raised during the UPR working group sessions and member states have received recommendations on a broad range of women’s rights during the UPR interactive dialogue. They relate to violence against women and girls, political participation and representation, access to education, access to health, sexual and reproductive health rights, employment or access to justice. What we observe is that after accepting UPR recommendations several states have taken action to advance women’s and girl’s rights by ratifying, for instance, the Istanbul Convention or the Maputo Protocol, amending or enacting legislations to strengthen the legal protection framework. The UPR process has often forced also within states a human rights culture thanks to the consultations that are taking place before the review and in the implementation process of the recommendation. The participative approach of the UPR is definitely a strength of the mechanism as it has used the involvement of all national actors concerned, governments, parliaments, judicial systems, law enforcement officials, civil society, national human rights institutions and academia to advance human rights in a holistic way. An important aspect of the UPR is that it has held governments accountable to their peers and national constituents and has created a space for dialogue and cooperation with civil society to advance gender equality. We also saw UN agencies, such as UNFPA, UNICEF and UN Women integrating the UPR in their programme of work to advance women’s and girl’s rights.
Hannah Reinl
So you just touched on the role of civil society already, which is great because it would have been my next question. Can you speak a bit more to the role that local grassroots movements and civil society organisations play when it comes to complimenting international regulation efforts such as those that we see in the UPR process? And how do they really bring about meaningful change on the ground?
Mona M’Bikay
Civil society plays a critical role in the UPR Process. Even though the UPR is a peer review between UN member states, the mechanism has at its core the participation of civil society. Civil society organisations contribute to the review through the submission of reports, which is one of the basis of the review. But also by participating in consultations that are leading to the review and which create an opportunity to debate about the human rights situation in the country, assessing the processes, challenges and creating a space to define collaboratively a way forward. We saw that civil society organisations have played an important role in monitoring governance compliance with its human rights obligation and commitment. The UPR Process offers to them a point of discussion with the government to advance human rights. We recognise that the preliminary responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill lies with the state but civil society can play an important role in advancing human rights. When it comes to human rights education and awareness within campaigns advancing human rights requires strengthening the legal and institutional frameworks but also change in behaviour and practice. And it is there that civil society organisations can play an important role in supporting the implementation of UPR recommendations received by working with communities at the local or grassroots level. Let me illustrate this with an example of a civil society organisation in the DRC that engaged in a dialogue with traditional leaders to end child marriage. It was one of the recommendations received by DRC during their first UPR and through the dialogue with traditional leaders and civil society, traditional leaders committed during the ceremony to no longer celebrate child marriage. The same approach has been developed in other countries to address harmful traditional practices. Another example is that in Morocco a group of women organisations have raised awareness on domestic violence. In Bangladesh also, one organisation has promoted gender equality through an educational programme delivered to young boys and girls to encourage positive masculinity. As you can see it’s very important to see the UPR not as a one-time-event happening in Geneva, but a process that starts at the national level and engages national actors over a period of four and a half years that starts with the drafting of the report and continues, following the review, with the implementation of the recommendations at the country level. The UPR supports the advancement of human rights on the local level by getting the support of the international community for the formulation of recommendations. But after the UPR interactive dialogue the recommendations are going back in the countries and require, for the effective implementation, a whole-of-society and government approach, contextualisation and finding solutions at the local level to advance human rights.
Hannah Reinl
So really, central role for civil society. Thanks for illustrating that with these two examples. Seth, what are your views on this?
Seth Nimwesiga
I do agree with Mona, that indeed civil society organisation, especially the local grassroots movement organisations have that deep rooted understanding of local contexts. They have the understanding of, you know, cultures. So, for example, the international level recommendations might come through, but you might find that for example, what is very recommended in a certain country is or is not applicable, so working with the grassroot organisations who have a better understanding of the local contexts and the challenges it makes the process relevant to, you know the person, the last person who it is supposed to be serving, but also civil society organisations, like mine, have this pool of mobilising communities to advocate for their own rights. I mean, because once we have information such as this, for example, this capacity building that I am getting, I know that I will pass this to the communities and I can help communities. It's not always going to be the civil society. Communities are now having the power to hold the governments accountable. Yeah, but also we have the reach to the, you know, the marginalised, the most vulnerable, marginalised populations to amplify their voices. And this is what we do at my organisation day-to-day and this helps us to, you know ensure that the people that we serve are the grassroots at the local level have the power also to inform what is being discussed at international level and that channel is only enabled through the civil society, the grassroots movements that amplify these voices. So definitely the UPR and the grassroots are intertwined and civil society is the best channel.
Hannah Reinl
It goes both ways, right?
Seth Nimwesiga
Yes it does.
Hannah Reinl
I'm very sad to say that we do have to close, but I would like to ask both of you one last question, which will also be a bit of a challenge, because I'm going to ask you in really just one sentence to summarise what a human rights-based approach to gender equality means to each of you.
Mona M’Bikay
For me, I would say that it means ensuring that the voice of the civil society, in particular women and girls, is heard in the decision-making process when it relate to issues affecting them. We need to advance women's rights and gender equality.
Hannah Reinl
Thank you. And Seth, what is your sentence?
Seth Nimwesiga
Well, a human rights-based approach to gender equality for me, it means that gender equality is a fundamental human right, so all individuals, regardless of who they are, of their gender, of their race, etc, they are entitled to equal opportunities. They are entitled to respect and protection and they are entitled to participation to hold their duty bearers accountable to equality, but also to empowerment. For meaningful advocacy, to live their life to the fullest for that. For me that means equality, diversity, inclusion.
Hannah Reinl
I could not possibly think of a better way to end this podcast. Seth, Mona, thank you so much for joining us today.
Mona M’Bikay
Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, Seth.
Seth Nimwesiga
Thank you, Hannah. Thank you, Mona. Thanks for having us.