Human rights in Botswana are protected under the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

. The 2009 Human Rights Report by the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

noted that in general the government of

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalaha ...

has respected the rights of its citizens.
U.S Dept of State Human Rights Report: Botswana
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Constitution

The constitution of Botswana addresses human rights principles such as freedom of speech,

Freedom of assembly Freedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared ide ...

and the right to life.

Issues

Freedom of speech and press

The constitution addresses the notion of freedom of speech and this is generally respected by the government.

Death penalty

The High Court in Johannesburg,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

has described Botswana as a "pariah state not synchronized with the majority of African countries that have either abandoned or are refusing to implement the death penalty". Thirty-two people were hanged in Botswana between independence in 1966 and 1998 and a further six were executed between 2001 and 2006.

Indigenous people

Many of the indigenous

San people The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia ...

have been forcibly relocated from their land onto reservations. To make them relocate, they were denied from accessing

water Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...

from their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food. Their lands lie in the middle of the world’s richest

diamond Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...

field. Officially, the government denies that there is any link to mining and claims the relocation is to preserve the wildlife and ecosystem, even though the San people have lived sustainably on the land for millennia. On the reservations, they struggle to find employment and

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomi ...

is rampant.

Historical situation

The following chart shows Botswana's ratings since 1972 in the

Freedom in the World ''Freedom in the World'' is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House that measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territori ...

reports, published annually by Freedom House. A rating of 1 is "free"; 7, "not free".

International treaties

Botswana's stances on international human rights treaties are as follows:

Notes

References

External links

Freedom in the World 2012 Report
by Freedom House {{Botswana topics

Politics of Botswana