Access to justice under COVID-19

Luckily, for Uganda, the justice administration and governance system include the Local Council Courts right from the village level. Local Council Courts are recognised as courts in Uganda and provided for under the Local Council Courts Act of 2006. These courts are established at the village, parish, town, division and sub country levels and are made up of Local Council Executive members. L.C courts are charged with dealing in marriage and divorce issues, land, contracts and other issues. A 2016 study by the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law found that in Uganda,  only 5% of cases go to a court of law, meaning that even in “normal” situations, the formal judicial system is marginal to the experience of justice for people in Uganda. In September 2019, while meeting with the Director General of International Development Law Organisation, the Uganda Chief Justice, citing a recent report, noted that 80 per cent of Ugandans rely on informal justice mechanisms rather than going through the formal system and called for strengthening of informal justice mechanisms such as Local Council courts.

The Local Council courts (especially the lowest village level courts, LC1) offer a form of justice that is more accessible to the most impoverished people of Uganda. LCCs are present even in the most remote areas and therefore offer an alternative to the formal courts of law that are mostly out of reach financially and in terms of physical distance. People who go through the LCCs for dispute resolution experience fewer negative emotions, such as stress, anger, frustration and humiliation than people who go to the police or to a court of law trying to settle their disputes. The LCCs are most often cited as the most effective dispute resolution process.

Local Council Courts are bedeviled with challenges such as existing (unequal) relations within communities affecting decision making ,police interference with their functioning, limited technical knowledge and skills of LCCs to effectively resolve disputes within their jurisdiction; lack of streamlined operations and management of LCCs, hindered by inadequate systems for monitoring of LCCs and their limited facilitation; the need to harmonise political action and processes to further strengthen the perception of legitimacy of LCCs and public confusion surrounding LCCs and lack of awareness amongst communities as to their role and responsibilities.

In a situation like the current Covid19 lockdown, these courts would come in handy to handle issues related to crime and family problems including domestic violence which are among the top three justice needs for majority Ugandans. Hopefully, the current challenges will stimulate government to provide both funding and technical support to these important spaces of justice administration.

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Mukalazi Deus Mubiru is a Research Associate, Democracy and Rule of Law at Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies (GLISS).

deusmukalazi@gmail.com

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