Dr Spire Ssentongo Receives 2024 EU Human Rights Defenders Award

Ugandan academic, cartoonist and human rights defender, Dr. Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, is the recipient of the 2024 European Union Human Rights Defenders Award.

Dr. Spire is a professor, academic, columnist, portraitist, author, and editorial cartoonist.

He received the 2024 EU Human Rights Defenders Award on Thursday, May 2, 2024.

While presenting the 2024 EU Human Rights Defenders Award, Signe Winding Albjerg, the Ambassador of Denmark to Uganda, praised Dr Spire’s “courage and resilience” as he has opened up “alternative options for active citizen engagement”.

She said Dr Spire received the 2024 EU Human Rights Defenders Award for his use of social media to highlight issues of accountability through “exhibitions”.

“This has earned him significant praise but also threats due to his exposure of wrongdoing in public life. Despite the risks, Dr Spire has continued to advocate for an improvement in the quality of public service in Uganda,” she noted.

An Associate professor of Ethics and Identity Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, Dr Spire also teaches Ethics and Research methods at Makerere University.

He is the face of the famous social media exhibitions that saw Ugandans point out the poor services in roads, health, governance, and other sectors.

Speaking at the award event, the EU Ambassador to Uganda, Jan Sadek, saluted the two runners-up in this year’s EU Human Rights Defenders Award, Jesca Ruth Ataa for her advancement of the rights of Karamajong Women and Doreen Namyalo-Kyazze for defending the rights of vulnerable people in prisons.