Human Rights Part 1

A colleague of mine recently engaged me in a debate about the rights of a minority group in this country and triggered many thoughts, some of which I wish to share today.

You see, I hear of the rights of so many groups of people, humans, children, women, men and even animal rights. But what are the most important rights? I the think the collective rights of humans are the most important rights. Those rights need to be protected above the rights of anything else. When we say the rights of children, have we firstly noticed that in a way the rights that they should have access to as humans are being infringed upon or are we trying to close them out of the human bracket and make them simply children? When we think of the women, are we doing that to them, are we enforcing their rights as humans or are we just boxing them out of the human bracket. You see, I believe that if we keep segmenting the human race, we shall have so many minority groups and each will stand to fight for their rights much to the destruction of those rights that we are all entitled to as humans.

But it may seem impossible to remove this segmentation. The more we fight for or against the rights of these minority groups, the more we break the rights that we share as humans. To protect the rights of those small groups, we many times find ourselves sacrificing the general human rights that we once fought so hard to build. Today we all stand threatened, threatened by the protection of the minority and the majority. For we can’t do either without violating the rights of the majority. We are firstly human, and those rights that apply to many of us should be firstly upheld and protected without offending ourselves collectively as humans.

So when we stand to say wives should not be beaten by their husbands, the reason should be that they are human and not that they are wives. Yes this will call for all of us to stand.

So what was the discussion that I was engaged in? It was on the subject of homosexuality in Uganda. Not just homosexuality, but homosexuality in this country. So that’s why I say we should firstly defend the human rights against the rights of any minority or majority group, but in defending those rights we should not offend ourselves. Ourselves as the people we are, in this case, we are Africans and majorities are Christians. We need to stand for those things by which we measure right and wrong. Those identities that have defined the course of our culture and our very lives. Those are the cultures by which we are human and by which we are able to defend the rights of us all.

And because as humans we have the right to express ourselves, all camps should front their opinions, and they should be passionate about their views, but in doing so their subsequent actions should not be in violation of our rights and our nature.
To be continues.

Is This Loving

Recently, I experienced a degeneration in my will to stand for the things that I believe in, a weakness towards those evil pulls that had once held me captive until the time the power of God intervened. Like many people I tried to understand my situation, and tried to find reason for the sudden drift. A drift from a safe and steady standing to a very destructive imbalance. I tried to blame those that I love and those that are near me, those in the distant past and those in my present. Today and I realized that I was grossly in error.

The question that stands today is why we many times want to share the blame we find on our hands with those others. If we love as we claim, why are we, many times, quick to accuse them. Why is loving a series of imposed responsibilities and obligations, the failure of which to perform, automatically leads to persecutions of those we claimed to love. It seems as if this love we claim to give, comes with a heavy obligation to those that stand to receive it, a burden of sorts. It’s as if we use them to cover up for the flaws in our own character or resolve to perform certain acts.

The husband that cheats on his wife because she cannot give him children, the other that beats her up because she is disrespectful are all symbols of this burdensome loving. The father that banishes his daughter from the home because she got pregnant while in school and the so many that may come to mind are all examples. You see my friends, in my opinion, the nearest word to love is freedom. Freedom to thrive and freedom to err, freedom to speak and to be silent when we choose. This is a measure we are not going to be comfortable with always and we may fail many times until we get it right but we have to keep trying.

The people we love are bound to hurt us many times, but are we going to let them? We hold such power in love that an offence does not hurt, that a wrong does not hurt. This does not mean that a wrong is not looked at as a wrong, it is, but in relation to the wronging, we stand to forgive, our bridge of love unbroken and our will to love steady.

So if my moral stand broke, I have no right to blame it on anything or anyone. It’s purely my fault and a problem for which I should get the help of those that I love and love me. That is the reason why we love, that we may prove that divine value, that value that sees people as they truly are. Not measuring them against what they gave and what they held back. For while we ask for help, we should learn to make our asking as freeing as we can. Not to wrap it in thousands of obligations and traps that many times break human bonds but to leave it exposed to the air of choice. To know that those that we approach with the request for help, have a will and a mission in this life, that they may choose to help or not and yet that does not imply that they don’t care about us or love us. We should and learn that people grow and that in what may seem like an offence to us, lies a lesson to both the ‘’offender’’ and the ‘’offended’’

Our biggest joy should lie in watching those we love grow, even if that groth may mean taking them from us. Shall we commit to the development of others? The questions on the subject reamin many.

my friends are those I am careful not to hurt and yet not afraid after hurting them. Those are my friends, the people whose love I will always count on.
Correct me if am wrong.