Youth For Rights: Meet Rebecca from Uganda

Meet Rebecca Karagwa, a young WHRD from #Uganda working as a lawyer to promote gender equality and social justice. She is one of the 40 young human rights defenders who took part in the 2023 Vienna Youth & Child HRD Conference, organised by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Learn more about young human rights defenders on our website: srdefenders.org/young-hrds/
#YouthForRights
---------------------------------------------------
CREDITS:
Footage: Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders
Music: 'Clean ecology' by Evgeny Bardyuzha, via Pixabay
---------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:
[Music]
[Video opens with a cutout photo of Rebecca smiling, against a light blue background where the title appears: « 90 seconds with a young Human Rights Defender ». Rebecca is wearing a multicolour striped top and round glasses.]
Interviewer: Can you introduce yourself?
Rebecca: My name is Rebecca Karagwa. I am 26 years old from Uganda.
Interviewer: Why did you become a Human Rights Defender?
Rebecca: Really it's about passion, there's something within me that I had the urge to stand up for myself but also to stand up for other people. I was very interested and passionate about Justice in the community, Justice in society where I lived and Justice in the country. I did not plan to be a human rights defender. That knowledge with school and exposure, reading, sparked my urge to defend people's rights, to educate them, to teach them to be able to stand up for them in the ways that I do and I'm happy to be able to do that.
Interviewer: Is there anything you are particularly proud of in your work?
Rebecca: So it's very challenging for me to count a few good days as successes because we haven't yet arrived at where we want to be and so for me the success is to be able to continue the work so that women after us can still find something to be proud of, a place to you know continue the work as opposed to thinking we have arrived and then we we risk losing everything. And I also don't take any success as a person. I stand on shoulders of women before me, it is a collective effort.
[video fades to light blue and the hashtag #YouthForRights appears, along with the URL to the UN Special Rapporteur’s website featuring more content about young Human Rights Defenders. At the bottom of the page feature the credits for the video.]