I spent two days at the end of last week attending a conference at the Regent University School of Law on Promoting the Rule of Law in East Africa.  The conference was well organized and included an impressive list of thoughtful and thought provoking speakers (see here ).  The conference included a number of speakers from Uganda, including the current Director of Public Prosecutions (the head prosecutor in the country).  I learned about interesting developments in plea bargaining and a pilot project to improve juvenile justice in Uganda.  As is no surprise, Uganda suffers from over-crowded courts, long pre-trial detention periods, and a general public who often rely on traditional informal dispute resolution practices because the formal justice system is not seen as a good forum for their disputes (due to delays, costs, and corruption).   I was also very interested to learn about mediation programs to deal with land disputes in the north.

I was left with an impression that Uganda is a country struggling with many of the same issues in developing rule of law that are so common around the world.   I was also left with the impression that there are many talented, well trained and educated lawyers who are working hard on these issues. 

In the midst of these discussions, one issue was mentioned again and again:  child sacrifice.  I will admit, I haven’t been keeping up with this news.  I had no idea that child sacrifice is a real issue and on-going problem anywhere in the world, including in Uganda.  A few years ago the BBC did a documentary about this problem which you can view here .  The stories seem to all be fairly similar:  children are sacrificed due to the belief that if done “right” it will bring prosperity.  Most of the children who are killed seem to be victims of kidnapping, although there are also stories of parents killing their own children.  The BBC documentary has some shocking undercover scenes with discussions about how many children need to be killed to ensure the success of a business venture.

There are not many statistics regarding how common these crimes are, but one report, released last year, see here , based on qualitative interviews in Uganda, finds that this is a serious and on-going problem. It was also clearly an issue that all of the Ugandans who spoke at this conference were deeply concerned about.  Many of the speakers are actively working on this issue from a variety of positions, including helping children who had been seriously injured in attempted murders. 

Today, just a few days after returning from this conference, I read that the Ugandan President, after many months of back and forth, just signed into law one of the worst anti-gay laws in the world, see here .  This news is all the more disturbing after having spent several days hearing of the serious issues that Uganda is confronting, not the least of which is the problem of child sacrifice.  Clearly, laws that reinforce hatred and prejudice do not advance the rule of law.  The Ugandan President’s statements on signing the law were the kind that are regularly used to justify hatred and prejudice against minority groups such as that they “choose” to be this way (how many Jews have been killed throughout history for failing to “choose” to convert to another faith?).

It is hard to understand why a country like Uganda that struggles with a violent history, and current extreme challenges such as child sacrifice, would make who consenting adults  love a crime.  As Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  I can only hope that some of the impressive Ugandans I met in recent days will help to bend the arc of justice in Uganda back towards respect for human rights for gay Ugandans in the near future.