galauganda

The Right to Privacy continues

The necessity to privacy to personhood requires a right to choose the way in which, and the people with whom one seeks to pursue intimacy. This decisional aspect of the right even passes a right to intimacy.

 

Secondly, the right of privacy includes a special aspect exemplified by, but not limited to the home together; the two aspects establish a comprehensive zone of legal protection. Thus, from the explanation of the right to privacy, criminalizing homosexuality means among other things that the right is regaled, as well as there can be no privacy or individual liberty generally, without the freedom to make choices governing one’s intimate relationships with others.

 According to the European commission, the right to privacy includes the right to establish and develop relationships with other human beings especially in the emotional field, for the development and fulfillment of ones personality. Thus to restrict everyone who wishes to establish sexual relationships to a heterosexual one by law, hardly qualifies as affording that person their privacy, thus allow them to develop a personality. In this way, to criminalize homosexuality is a violation of our inherent right.

The right to privacy does not envisage only the country cottage in postal retreat, but more generally a zone of isolation, a legal cloister for those qualities, wishes, projects and lifestyles, which an individual wishes to enjoy or experience.

 

According to Article 29 (1) (e) of the Ugandan Constitution,

 

Every person shall have the right to;

 

‘Freedom of Association which shall include freedom to form and join associations or unions, include trade unions and political and other civic organizations’

 

Article 29(1) (a)

 

‘Freedom to assemble and demonstrate together with others peacefully and unarmed and petition;

Although the rights at article 29(1) (e) is often cast as a public right, the right to join a trade union or found a political party, the right applies to private sphere as well. The right to intimate association does not merely reduce to the freedom to make personal choices. It also derives from intrinsic values of values of intimate human relationship.

 

The principle and breadth of principles governing the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association and the conditions for its suspension include; private intimate association as well as social, cultural and political organizations.

 

The UDHR provides at article 20 (1);

        ‘Everyone has the right to freedom to peaceful assembly and association’

Because sexual orientation pervades all areas of life, from the most personal to the most political, sexual minorities can form an association.

 

Museveni and   Police’s order to arrest and prosecute homosexuals because we formed a group is a violation of our rights.

 

By criminalizing homosexuality, the law pulls away the platform on which we could stand and advocate for our right to freedom of speech and expression. Coupled with the rights against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, basic freedoms of speech and expression would then apply to oral and written speech containing themes pertinent to sexual orientation. This includes the equal rights to broadcast, to publish and circulate materials across domestic and international boundaries.

 

‘Hate Speech’