Arnold Kwesiga is the Coordinator of the Uganda Consortium on Corporate Accountability (UCCA). He holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Notre Dame in the US and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Makerere University in Uganda. He has previously worked for Human Rights Watch, Centre for Policy Analysis (Parliament Watch) and the Refugee Law Project, School of Law, Makerere University. Arnold holds a great passion for general human rights discourse, with a bias in social justice issues and minority rights. Arnold is a member of both the Public Interest Law Clinic and the Network for Public Interest Lawyers at Makerere University School of Law. Recently in Kampala, Salil Tripathi of IHRB met Arnold to discuss the state of corporate accountability in Uganda. Arnold spoke of the need for Uganda to prepare a proper national action plan, and for ways to engage local companies to embrace the UN Guiding Principles. A bigger challenge is tackling Uganda's informal sector in which 85% of Ugandans work, and who remain beyond the reach of big companies, foreign or local. This week (Sept 14-15, 2016) the Consortium is organising a major conference on business and human rights in Kampala, whose live-stream can be watched here: Day 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhXAehK6iY Day 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DlcNQTuE2A
The Coordinator of the Uganda Consortium on Corporate Accountability (UCCA) talks with IHRB's Salil Tripathi about their baseline study on the state of business, human rights and corporate accountability in Uganda's extractive sector and beyond.