CSOs happy with amendments in GMO bill

Dec 22, 2018

Parliament in October, 2017, passed the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill 2012. However, President Yoweri Museveni declined to assent to it.

The Civil Society Organisations and other non-State actors for over a decade opposed the government's decision to introduce and promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the farming and food systems of the country.

Parliament in October, 2017, passed the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill 2012. However, President Yoweri Museveni declined to assent to it.

The President sent it back to Parliament, a move welcomed by CSOs and food rights activists.

The President in his letter dated December 21, 2017, addressed to the Speaker of Parliament, queried the naming of the law Biosafety Act while it actually talked about GMOs.

However, the recently passed Genetic Engineering Regulatory Bill, formerly the National Biotechnology and Bio-safety Bill by Parliament has been welcomed by the CSOs activists.

In a public statement, six Civil Society Organisations said critical clauses inserted or clarified in the Bill provided key safeguards to farming and food systems in the country.

The CSOs included Participatory Ecological Land Use Movement (PELUM Uganda), Food Rights Alliance (FRA), Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI Uganda), Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), ESAFF Uganda and Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)

According to Agnes Kirababo, the executive director FRA, the amended regulation secured the biodiversity, the environment and the economic opportunities in the organic and GMO free markets.

"Our long-standing concerns had been contents of the GMO Bill and the manner in which they had been developed to introduce GMOs in our agriculture sector. These were compromising the rights of smallholder farmers who are majority of those in the agriculture sector, right to food, right to clean environment, sustainable development, sustainable diets and biodiversity of crops, animals, fisheries and insects and the growing economic market potential of organic products in the global market," she said.

President Museveni had also hinted that the rights of Ugandan farmers that have for generations developed, managed, conserved and preserved the countries genetic resources of crops, animals, herbs, insects and fish had been threatened by National Biosafety Act 2017.

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