Botswana to submit human rights report to United Nations

Botswana will submit her Universal Peer Review Mid-Term Report (2018-2020) to the International Human Rights Council in Geneva at the end of this month.

The report could have been submitted in July this year were it not for Covid-19 pandemic, the General Counsel at the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration Molodi Dittah Legomela has explained. Speaking during a session to validate the preparation of the report by a Drafting Team at Manong

Lodge recently, Legomela explained that the report would include some of the recommendations that the Human Rights Council had advised Botswana to consider. These include the imperative need to review the country’s Constitution with a view to removing provisions that are deemed discriminatory. However, Legomela did not mention these provisions of the Constitution. He did however state that the Human Rights Council has expressed discomfort with Botswana’s Customary Law, which it deems discriminatory against women insofar as it relates to inheritance and division of family estate in the event of death of parents. Other issues that the report covers include Botswana’s position on Capital Punishment (Death Penalty), which Legomela did not elaborate on since the report is still to be submitted before the Human Rights Council. The country status with respect to Gender Based Violence and strategies and programmes and means that Botswana has adopted to respond to this menace have also found their way into the UPR Mid Term Report as has Botswana’s handling of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender issues. In a landmark judgement that has received international accolades and acclaim around the world, High Court Judge Michael Leburu decriminalised same sex relations thereby opening a new era for this minority group. Even then the Attorney General’s Chambers has vowed to appeal the judgement. Speaking at the session to validate the UPR Mid Term Report, Director of the Human Rights Unit in the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration Tebogo Mapodisi explained that the report being prepared is exclusively a Government Report, which explains the absence of civil society organisations in the Drafting Team.