Rule of Law and Uganda’s Legal System

Rule of Law and Uganda’s Legal System.

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Human Rights Protection, the protection of vulnerable minorities, the institutional structures in place for vulnerable persons and groups to have the ability under Uganda’s legal system and other institutions to protect themselves from harm.

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We have detailed the pattern of governance and social life and the extreme negative effects on Ugandan society that has been driving its citizens into exile, seeking asylum. We found and documented above, that although Uganda’s international donors and supporters have helped to implement forward thinking legislation regarding the rule of law, treatment of vulnerable minority, health care, and nurturance of society, the current government, now in its 37th year of rule, has constructed its system of governance in a manner that adds to, rather than reduces social dysfunction and harm. The rule-of-law in Uganda is not practiced or enforced by the national or regional governments. What few anti-corruption cases there are, are against opposition parties and used to convict and jail, low level administrators for slight, or wholly fabricated offenses. An example of a slight corruption offense is the trial of government employee Amos Lugoloobi, who used government provided tin roofing sheets to roof his goat shed without paying for it. Meanwhile, US and other international donors report that the Ugandan government has lost trillions of Ugandan Shillings worth hundreds of millions of pounds that eventually end up in party loyalists’ bank accounts. The World Justice Project has ranked Uganda as the second most corruption-ridden country among the world’s low-income countries.

Only the Democratic Republic of Congo is ranked worse than Uganda. Investigators found that government officials in the executive branch use public office for private gain, matching missing public funds donated by allies to Ugandan officials’ personal expenditures. Government officials alleged misconduct includes bribes, informal payments, and other inducements while delivering public services and enforcing regulations. Independent investigators also looked at the extent to which government procurement and public works contracts are awarded through a closed and informal process of family and party loyalists’ system of graft, and the various mechanisms that government officials at various levels of the executive branch embezzle public funds. Investigators found that the officials in the police and the military use their offices to solicit and accept bribes to perform basic police and military services or to investigate crimes and are not free of improper influence by private interests or criminal organisations. Even judges and judicial officials in the judicial branch were found to have solicited and accepted bribes to perform duties or expedite processes, and whose judicial rulings are not free of improper influence by the government, private interests, and criminal organisations. To a lesser extent, investigators found that elected members of parliament have on occasion, used their public offices and votes to trade for financial inducements. Overall, prosecution of an NRM government minister for corruption is rare.