Amin reframed: the UK, Uganda, and the human rights ‘breakthrough’ of the 1970s

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the role of human rights discourse in reframing the changing diplomatic relationship of the United Kingdom and Uganda during Idi Amin’s dictatorship of 1971-1979. The emergence of a violent military dictatorship in Uganda in the early 1970s posed difficult questions for Britain, which had played a central role in the creation of the Ugandan nation-state in the colonial era and maintained many connections to it. In the first years of Amin’s rule the UK had adopted a pragmatic stance, in which human rights concerns were not considered, and geopolitical and economic concerns came first. However, in the mid 1970s the emergence of an energetic transnational ‘community of conscience’ contributed to a reframing of the UK’s stance on Uganda in explicit human rights terminology. This was a limited and sometimes contradictory shift that also served to obscure embarrassing aspects of the UK-Uganda relationship.