JUSTICE IN HER VOICE: THE WEIGHT OF BACKLOG ON WOMEN IN LAW.

The different courts all over the country obviously are along the lines of family issues. We have women who are having issues along the lines of estate management. You have widows and daughters who are unable to access property that they may have rightly inherited from their spouses or from their fathers. We have women who are facing issues, one of the biggest issues being gender-based violence. Um, in any particular court you go to, you'll find cases. And I think recently we had um a program being launched which is called Justice for Her, which was launched by the UN Women and the Australian government, with a major focus of trying to support women who are having challenges accessing justice along the lines of gender-based violence.

So right now, the statistics reflect that for a case which is um a gender-based violence case to be heard, you need about 9,919 days. And keeping in mind our understanding that justice is not a building, it's a service; the right to timely justice is not—it's not just a privilege, it's a right. For someone to wait for 9,919 days to have a decision or um to have justice in a case which is, for instance, gender-based violence, is definitely um a challenge that we must—we must discuss and we must be able to address creatively. And that's why one of our focus points for this discussion is to understand from our hosts, from our—from Madame Prima Kalla and Madame Linda Alinda—is how can we address this issue? How can we better support women all over the country to access justice, and how can we remove these hindrances that are affecting women's ability to access justice in a timely and reasonable—uh, in a timely and a reasonable way?

I think another thing we want to address is the issue of um sexual harassment in workplaces. I think that's another unique challenge that affects women all over the country. We have women who, when you look at most of the cases which are—are relating to sexual harassment, they uniquely affect women. When you look at issues which are relating to land—land matters all over the country, they uniquely affect women. When you look at issues relating to estate management, they uniquely affect women. So our conversation today should be centered around that, and—and I would like to invite Mr. Elison Kanga to briefly give us the profiles of uh Miss Prima Kalla and Miss Linda Alinda before we get into the conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much, Mari.

We are honored today to be having Prima Kalla and Linda Alinda Iza. These are not just two of the finest female lawyers in Uganda; these are two of the finest lawyers in Uganda. They have a deep understanding of legal practice. They have um an incredibly strong reputation as lawyers, as leaders of the legal profession, as mentors of—of—of the younger generation of lawyers. Prima is one of the most formidable voices in this country for justice and for equity. She is a human rights lawyer by training and by orientation. She's the chief executive officer of the Women's Pro Bono Initiative. She is a—she's a Makerere University alumni, Columbia University alumni. She's from Mbale. She's—she's just at another level when it comes to this business of—of—of justice. She's passionate about the causes of women and the causes of justice. At one time, if I recall—maybe even now, I don't know if it is now—she was the chairperson of the female lawyers um Committee of the Uganda Law Society. She's been named one of the Women of Courage. She has uh innovated things for human trafficking cases, land cases, gender violence cases. If you—if you ever visit Luzira Women's Prison and you just turn the visitor's book, you'll find her name on every page as a guest. I don't know how many people she visits and—and—and pushes the rights of. So first of all, we're very, very happy to have you, Prima. Good evening to you and everyone listening in today.

It's really an honor to be in this space, knowing the background of the speakers you bring onto the space. I—I really feel honored to be here today to share my thoughts um on the space. So I'm excited and looking forward to the next one hour or two or more. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is none other than the indefatigable Linda Alinda Kanza, famously known as Nalongo in Lego circles, but she's also actually Nalongo for real. She is a legal powerhouse by any description. She has done innovation. She has an app—she has a legal app. She has done innovation. She does teaching. She's one of the foremost teachers of law of not just students at LDC, but lawyers in practice with her trial advocacy program. She's an experienced commercial litigator. I have recently been against her in court; she's horrible—while there, she's a fantastic fighter for the cause of her clients. She is um—I—I think she also does moots at LDC. She has trained hundreds upon hundreds of lawyers in—in courtroom skills, in—in litigation, and she's a fierce litigator, partner currently at Amber Advocates, a respected trial lawyer, a legal giant by any and every description. So we are really honored to have you here, Linda, as—as a titan of our profession, as a leader in our profession. I—I—I don't like to call our guests today female leaders because any lawyer worth his salt will agree that our guests are—are leaders of lawyers of all genders. And so, Linda, you're most—most welcome, and thank you for being with us now, Nalongo.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for continuing—you're not mute—for me, you're not on—I think log off and log on again. Okay, I think we're having trouble getting Linda, but um as you—as you're coming on, Linda, we are—I think we'll—we'll—we'll um kick straight into it. Um, we'll kick straight into it with—with this conversation. Today's conversation is going to focus on the weight of backlogging women. Now, the weight of backlog on women, and um this—why this is important is because, like we've been saying, we have a serious crisis of backlog, and on top of having a serious crisis of backlog, we have a constitutional solution in Article 142, Clause 2 of the Constitution. And—and I want to start with—um, I want to start actually with Linda. Are you on? Maybe Linda, welcome to the space formally, and um can you hear me now? You still—you are still listening. You—the speaker invite—I sent invite to speak—speak—you had come on—um, you know, can you hear me now?

Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be on this. I just—ph—okay—um, you speak—yeah, you can hear me. I was—on a personal note, I want to thank you guys for continuing to have these important conversations. I think the backlog—an indefinite campaign season—has given us the blessing of introspection and deeper reflection on challenges that we usually gloss over. [Music] And it's such a—it's such an important season that we're in. So—me—h—so to be able to have these conversations, I think, is—is important for the—particularly—many times we have other sectors in the judici—in—in the justice system retrospect, and as above, we—we usually by standards and usually only contributors to the complaining and never the solutions. So I really look forward to our conversation this evening because I think that we had really no solutions, which is a contribution we need to make. Um, thank you so much. Um, thank you—so—so much, and—uh, thank you so much for that. I think maybe we'll start with Prima. I think before we get into this—this conversation that we need to have, and—and I agree with you, we are actually trying to look for solutions and to have a conversation, but maybe before we do that, Prima, maybe if you could just tell us—tell our—the people who have come to listen to us, if you just tell us about Prima Kalla; what drew you to the law? What inspires you? What made you a person interested in women's rights and out there fighting every day, forming a Women's Pro Bono Initiative, and tell us about you—tell us about the Women's Pro Bono Initiative and just what you do very briefly. Those are too many questions in one.

Briefly, my name is Prima Kalla. Prima means first and Kalla means love. Um, the nutshell: first love. I'm a firstborn between my parents—over seven girls, one boy. And for the longest time in our family, my mom was looking for a boy. So every other year I came back in school from a very young age, my mom was pregnant. And at some point, I was like, "But when will this come to an end?" Was looking for—yeah. So—um, no, I think—I think it's better now. As a woman, didn't seem like it was enough for my mom to have her place in her marriage when she had us daughters. At one point we were five girls, and my dad was the only man that came into the home, and that seemed to be it. Didn't seem to bother him, but for my mom, I think the community and societal pressures were like, "You must have a son." There were so many people offering her medications. Um, there were people, you know, asking her to visit their shrines. The pastors were not giving her a break—first, you know, because my mom used to have—until she had a son. So for me, from a very young age, I felt like, "But you're married. Why is it not enough that you're married and you have two—of us—women—through your five? You really hope that one day you—you will get a son." And unfortunately for us, at some point—and my story is really online for those that might want to exploit more, you can just Google my name; you will come across my podcast or my MTH sharings or stories as I write monologues about why we founded the Women's Pro Bono Initiative.

At some point in my family, the extended family supported my dad to get a second wife to give him a son, and my mom was driven out of her marital home. And as a young girl, I witnessed that and how brutal it was for my mom and mentally traumatizing. She was not driven out alone; she was driven out with her daughters. We had to pack our bags and leave. I think we were consuming food for—for nothing, and um we left, and my mom couldn't stop crying about the contributions she had made to his life, to his family, construction of that home. And the growing up, I think the only desire I had was to help my mom one day get justice. But being a born-again Christian, I don't think I—and for my mom, she looked for vengeance or what she really—all her life—to look for that day she would forgive my dad and move on and rebuild her life. Yeah. So as a young girl growing up, even through school, I think I was looking for fulfillment of that—would help me support my mom get—and it's not just—I know that in my family there are women who are unable to give birth, and many of them are driven out—cannot stay in—for—so—so this person can find the right—unmarried—to—when it comes to owning land, you know, it is—and my brothers who have access to that land—I'm aware of what the Constitution says, but I know that even in my practice as a lawyer, the practice when I'm visiting women in—my office which I—I found a really based from these problems that I have experienced at a personal level, but what I see in the community, how we experience the law when we get into the courtrooms or that—and—um—our day-to-day lives—there's a lot of injustice and unfairness and lots of gender lenses we—we need to—to be looking at. And as my sister Linda mentions that today we're talking about solutions, I—I would like to—really—on what—but—myself and why we found the [Music] Women's—actually bring it forward to back them up to access a lawyer that can serve them. And our office is that—so you can speak to a lawyer for free—in case you need to speak to one when you're being thrown out of your home, or your children are being taken away, or you're going through a bad divorce, you can just call our office and speak to a lawyer and get free legal advice. If you need someone to stand with you in office, we have lots of women lawyers that are in our office, and some that have offered free hours to just be able to come and commit and stand with you in court for that case. We also represent you; we do strategic cases as well. We have challenged laws, policies, times, practices that affect or have a negative impact on women and girls in our society. So very briefly, without taking too much time away from Linda, that is what we do and why I do it. Thank you, and over to you, El.

Thank you. Um, thank you so much, Prima. I think everyone now knows exactly why we wanted you to be on this space—that the passion and energy and knowledge and experience—personal experience and work experience that you bring to this subject is absolutely admirable. I've actually watched that clip that you're telling people to see on the internet, and I think it's really worth a watch. But now let me turn to you, Linda, and um really a similar question before we dig into our backlog discussion: Tell us about Linda; what makes her tick? What makes her the legal giant that she is in our practice? No, you're on—you're on mute.

I—I—I wear many hats, but I think that I will concentrate on who I am as—or on my journey into legal practice. First, I had the sheer blessing to the practice of law, having been raised in a household—I—I think that I—I come—I—I view the law from its long-term and generational issues. I don't usually have the hangover of never having seen someone live their entire life as a lawyer and seeing its impact on their family, on their children, and on their broader social responsibilities. So I was raised in a household where my grandfather and father were lawyers, and after our father died, my mother faced injustices that saw us driven out of the home that we had raised—that we had been raised in—calling home. And I recall I was at LDC at the time, and my mom could not afford lawyers, and we would get thrown out in the morning, and my task as the lawyer in the house was to always come back with interim orders that could enable the police and the LC and the whole supportive system that knew that we were entitled to be in that house to support us to get back in legally. And I think that for me that was the baptism by fire that led me to—to litigation—to many of—to many, many of the journeys that I have ended up in in legal practice. So I started out in private practice and then moved to the corporate world, and it was in the corporate world when I felt that my love for litigation was drying up, and I started teaching. And then teaching opened me to a whole new door. I've been teaching since 2001, and I've had the blessing of interacting with lawyers from different jurisdictions, from different walks of life, from lawyers that are senior to me that I train—train—as—as in their advocacy skills, which usually is deeply humbling because it—it keeps you real and authentic, and—and then I went to LDC where I've been teaching the last 11 years. And I think that a lot of the other things that I have ended up doing, for example, the app, always comes from my realization of how much my life is different as a female lawyer from men. So when the weight of whether social duties or family [Music] obligations remind you of how indispensable you are as a human being, and for me I have found in technology the solution to expand and remove the limitations you have as a human being that can help you dispense justice to many more people than you could ever have. It's almost the same reason I teach, because I find that when you equip other people with skills, they will go out there and live out their full potential as litigators and bring justice to places you would never have been, but which you definitely have a—a passion for. So—so in a nutshell, that's—that's me, and I think that one of the things that has really driven me to justice for women is ending up as a mother of only daughters. And I think that that is something I'm always constantly talking about. I really wanted boys; I was a tomboy growing up. I ended up with only girls, and then I realized girls are actually really, really special, and yet the world is not that friendly to them. So I think that also my journey raising girls has forced me to address the structured injustices that I—for—I want to be able to look my daughters in the face when—if they end up as lawyers, which I hope—God forbid—they don't—if they end up as lawyers, I want to be able to say to them, "I—I did this and I did that," because I know for sure they will hold me to account.

You so much. Thank you so much, Linda, and um I think this is really a good point for us to get into the conversation, and maybe I'll start with you actually, Linda, and I think—I think what everyone can hear from both of you is leaders—people who see problems and think solutions. From your vantage point as a legal practitioner, Linda, what does backlog look like in—in practice, and how—what's its effect on women?

So when you think backlog, you think about like a traffic jam. You think about something that freezes you in your tracks when time is still moving. That—that's what backlog really is. It's—it's a—it's a huge traffic jam of cases. Have you ever sat in that long jam where you start to think, "How can I get out?" Ah, this morning—this morning, I'm sure all of you were thinking, "What do I do? Do I abandon this car? Can I—can I swim back?" Backlog—cases—backlog is exactly that for—for cases. And if there is anything that is very real for us as women, it's—it's a human biological clock. I'm telling you, they tick—they tick nonstop, unlike men. I remember very vividly being a young lawyer in 2009, feeling so lost in some Cho case that I was defending in a—in Mengo Court—h—desperately trying to get pregnant because I had been one year into marriage, but knowing that if—if this case gets another judgment, I am not willing to come back to this court pregnant because I don't want to find myself giving birth in a courtroom or going through my biological issues on top of a case that is not ending. So if there is a clock that cannot—for us as women, when we come—when we interact with the practice of law, our clocks are still ticking, and you find yourself having to make so many decisions—family decisions, client decisions, business decisions—on how you get to the destination you needed to get to quickly. So backlog, in—in addition to—I'll—will speak as a practitioner first because there's—I think that Prima will speak a lot more for the women and how they interact with—with justice as clients and what it does to them from the whole angle of whether it is gender-based violence and how women are forced to remain longer in very toxic and dangerous situations because maybe the house they're living in actually does not belong to them, and if they leave, that's it—whatever title or whatever interest that is documented is not in their name, and only their physical presence can keep or secure that interest they have. So you—you—you think about what backlog does to someone like that, and then you shift it to me as a practitioner who is that person's lawyer, and you see that female lawyers now avoid litigation. I know so many female lawyers in private practice for whom litigation—it means I'm referring that case to a young man, or I'm hiring young men to go and deal with that, and then you find that—then that removes women from a lot of the litigation panels, and yet we bring a unique sense and a unique lens through—through which we see disputes. And then you think about how many—one of the reasons why I teach uh litigation skills is because I've found so many women that will settle a case at a loss, if I may say, just because they don't want to go through the whole horrendous—whether it is being belittled by the male chauvinism in the courtroom, or whether it is the uh sexual harassment—both from the bar or the bench or the client.

They will take the quickest route and out of that dispute, and many times that quickest route is not the best route for the client. It's not the best result that the client should have been entitled to. And then you think about things like how, uh, they control their interaction with courts. I know, and and and I have to speak in as real or as as um, shall I say, raw as possible. I know so many female lawyers who will, in how they pick when they go to court, try to figure out the best part of a month because, for us as women, we don't have a a clean, you know, 30 days every month that is uninterrupted by our biological clocks. So you will, you know, that most of our courtrooms don't have functional bathrooms, don't have um, restrooms that you can call decent at any level. And for us, it it will actually become very important that I don't find myself in in a courtroom where I need a walking bathroom at that time of my month, because then I am going to counsel on the opposite side who is a man is going to be thinking about cross-examination. I'm going to be thinking about how I get out of that courtroom without embarrassing myself. And those are real. I I don't think many people realize how much that then stiffs the, the, shall I say, scales from where we operate. Yeah. So I can't remember what question I was answering, but I think that for as long as you cannot predict how long a case will take, for as long as it is normal that a case can take 5 years, and that is in fact, first you are lucky. Ah, no, no, no, no, no. Justice will keep pushing the women to the sidelines, both as clients and as practitioners. Case will take. Thank you so much, um, Linda, and uh, justice will keep pushing the women to the sidelines, both as clients and as practitioners. And I want now to take a conversation to Prima on that particular point, and um, uh, the question I ask you was how backlog affects gender cases, but what I want you to do, Prima, is really to give us these human life stories, the stories that Prima quala and the women's proon initiative interact with every day, so we can see what the impact is now on the women in the society, on the men in the society that you that you help, if you could just go away with it. Prima, the women's Pono initiative interact with every day, so we can see what the impact is now it on the women, if you could just thank you, Elon.

Yeah, I hope my mic is on. Yes, it is. Yeah, um, I can attest that backlogs in the just jce system have a very disproportionate impact on vulnerable women. If you consider cases of sex, gender-based violence, questions of like rape, in cases of backlog, you know the common saying is, delayed Justice is Justice denied. When we take long to hear cases of rape, it causes further trauma and stress for survivors. I have, for instance, handled a case of rape which was filed I think in 20 2018, and to this date judges keep changing, and every time we go today to with a new judge we have to to go through the trial again, to the extent that you know we have to support some of our clients with the psychosocial support for them to be able to stand these trials, cuz you know having to be cross-examined by different prosecutors year after year, year after year, hoping that one day this person will be brought to book is really painful. And if you look at the statistics in our country, even though sexual violence cases are the most reported cases at any given point or time in this country, less than 1% are prosecuted to conclusion. For instance, last year more than 13,000 cases were recorded; if you look at our police crime report annually, more than 13,000 are sexual violence cases. Now less than 1% of those is almost less than 10. You know, 13,000 girls come forward and say, I was raped by my brother, I was raped by my uncle, I was raped by a teacher, I was raped by this person. There's evidence; police put them through the traumatizing process of, you know, collecting their KN cars, spreading their legs, taking swabs, taking DN, sometimes even they get pregnant through the whole process, and if you ever want to get Justice or to see those cases prosecuted to conclusion, it could take you up to 7 years. Now imagine having to go to retell your trauma to the public; many women will just give up. And and this is because of, again, backlog. Evidence gets lost, you know, because even these police officers that collect the evidence, they get changed from time to time, so next time you find the person, the storkeeper, when they say, how is the Nika? Can you please uh, exhibit exhibit one? The exhibit is not there. And you know the rules of evidence in criminal trials, you must prove your case Beyond Reasonable Doubt. In the absence of the Nika, it is he-said, she-said, because this is a case that was um committed in the absence of not so much, not many, not people are not always there to witness these things. So the medical evidence, if it is not there, if it's not apparent, if doctors move on, they went I mean out of the country, former pastures, I mean, you have lost the case, and therefore no justice for the women that come forward. Many women interest in some of these cases; sometimes we have to support them, encourage them to come forward, but even us as AR and people who want to support them to achieve this, it becomes so burdensome for us. Then there they it encourages perpetu impunity because someone knows that even if I do something and you go to court, when will they ever bring me up to trial? The cases are way too many, so perpetrators are are emboldened to act with impunity because they know that they will go to court, they will be in prison, time be out, and again you, because you did not achieve Justice, and why did you not achieve Justice? Backlog. They are no judicial officers, or they are being shifted from time to time, and you know criminal sessions only come periodically throughout the year. That's a big problem for women, and they lose hope in the whole judicial process. Dispute, nightmare of in mostes women areound into mares. Political marriages get joint account. Joint account is the husband's, theet to their to get tit commun to buy land. It is Mr. who has the even the money, earn money, so when they come to court and say, really, you can see that the salary of this account is coming from Parliament, and I am the Member of Parliament, the person that is dispensing and disposing of the money, it's not a person before the court. And you know, on theing she has no, she got married, she was even we know that in our commun get married people anymore, you have gone, you have gone, you have nothing with your parents, now you have falling out with your husband, livelihood lost, you have nowhere to F, you have nowhere to sleep. I am handling a case of a woman in her 70s. She has just decided to flee this country because recently she fell out, not recently, like 3 years ago, we have been in family court; she fell out with her husband, and she said, I'm fed up of the domestic violence, and I came to this realization when my daughter was getting married. My husband has been beating me for the past 50 years, and when I saw my daughter getting married, I said to myself, my daughter is going to suffer the same violence, and when she comes to me for comfort, what am I going to be telling her? I cannot stand to look into her face and say endure because I endured. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. M. I said to myself, my daughter is going to suffer the same, and when she comes to me for comfort, what am I not going to be telling her? I cannot stand to look into her face and say endure because I endured. No, no, no, no. I want Justice. We have demanded for Justice from three different judges. She cannot go; her parents ask, and say the only thing my client wants is a home. At the age of 70, she cannot go back to her parents in bushen to ask for land; her father is in '90s, he even doesn't have land, he sold most of it. How does she start her life at 70 after being married? She married; the husband is saying, it's you who wants to leave, you have children, we have grandchild, you're now saying you want divorce, what kind of woman are you? Many times in court she is shamed for even age, like, what were you waiting for? There was a time a judge asked that from her, and you know, for her, you know, between us women, she said it's because of my daughter. I don't want my daughter to go through what I went through. I want to be in a good place to tell her to refuse, to resist. You know, backlogs increase vulnerability of women; they become more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse while are waiting for justice. When it comes to custody, the uncertainty and stress that backlogs can cause, you know, prolonged, you you can even lose your mind, and sometimes these people go to police and the man, because he has the resources again, seizes the babies, and by the time we go through the process, even the baby does not remember the mother. You know, there is of trafficking. I've heard cases where a man will come and more like kidnap his own child from this woman he had a baby with and take that person to the village where he comes from. The stress of a mother having to hound for their own child, if they decide to go through the court system, it takes years, years for them to recover their children, so this doesn't only impact on the women but it also impacts on the children and their best interests. So I don't know if I'm talking too much or outside even the time you have allotted to me, but the the impa we hope our listeners will also appreciate the plight of women in accessing uh justice all over the country. Um, the examples you give are very important, and what what comes to mind for me is the cases that you've been maybe supporting some of the people who have come to you for support. Understand from your perspective and your experience, do you think that different ways that the Judiciary has employed which is are things like plea gaining, encouraging things like plea gaining, ADR, maybe increasing the number of Judges all over the country, have these approaches maybe improved the access to justice for women, or will those approaches which the Judiciary continues to encourage because I think recently the Judiciary emphasized the need for ADR, and I'm sure plea gaining is something that's highly encouraged. We have so many funders coming to the country and trying to support uh women in these unique positions. Do you think those things, um, though they haven't just begun now, they've been done over time, do you think they present any unique solution to maybe reduce the challenges that the women are facing in the next 10 years? Do we do we expect to see any big change, or do we need a completely different approach from your experience? I would like to hear your opinion on that.

I'd like to say yes and no, because um, just saying ADR, there must be someone that is actually doing the ADR. If it's not the initiative of the victims to introduce um discussions, I have been involved. SE us I I will handle; you have lawyers on watching brief, but in most cases they're looking at how much can we clear so we can get paid. Sadly, I don't know if they are paid for how many cases they handled, but it seems that is the case. Maybe 10 cases; you have lawyers on watching brief, but in most cases they're looking at how much can we clear so we can get paid. Sadly, I don't know if they are paid for how many cases they hand, but it seems that is the case. And unfortunately, many women, in my opinion, are misrepresented, and sometimes because they have been so long in the system, they settle for less, or sometimes they just say, ah, let me just accept to be condemned so that I can get out of this entire system. I know for a fact that um, even though these Innovations have been introduced, sometimes even the implementers are not there, or the judicial officers in place are not equipped to handle this. And unfortunately, I have come across many judicial officers, even though our law is that you're innocent until proven guilty, most of them believe that you must be guilty until you prove yourself innocent. For someone on a criminal charge to be granted bail in our system lately, in practice, very difficult, and many times I'm going with all these bail applications because I come way ahead before criminal sessions are fixed, and the judges will say the criminal session is open, the practices we do not give, we do not grant bail during an existing criminal session. And I know for a fact that these judicial officers are going to handle all these cases in a criminal session, so your client misses out on bail as a remedy. Incer in this report, women now on an annual basis, more than 3,000 women, theis system every year, if you specific or if you care to look at the stats of our Uganda prisons, which they actually put out on their website on a monthly basis, the number of women prisons has more than doubled, and I have seen that most of the cases that women, you know, most of their crimes are really petty, petty crimes, petty theft, you know, they steal food from the market to feed their children, or bar before in a bar, these people in theam quarreling back and forth. I have done cases around, and you know more than 80% of the 2 million refugees fleeing into our country are women and children; most of those women find themselves in prisons. In Kand prison last year, I did some prop work there with my team; we found that most of the women in prison had been incarcerated for the offense of wondering about; I have never heard of such an offense in my life, postco wondering about, and most of them had served one to two years. I can't even say served cuz they were even some of them have not been tried, and your F is wondering about; some of them are refugees who cannot even speak languages, Ugandan languages, so Communications was too difficult, and the judicial officers were telling it's to understand what they are saying, so you just send them back to prison. I keep telling my friends that when we found a translator, we were able to mediate between the bench and the prisoners, and by the end of the month we had cleared the women's prison in Kongo because of the language barrier; they were stuck in the system, and and I don't know when we are in the court in the say like the central, there's someone interpreting in Uganda, and I know that even here in Kampala I've had challenges in KCA Court when they bring all these women from Karamoja, they bring them to the court, and then the person interpreting is speaking Luganda; these women speak I don't know what languages are spoken in Karamoja, but they're speaking languages from Karamoja, but the interpreter is interpreting in Luganda, and these women in the dock, they're just no D, even the prisoners cannot e for them what is happening. Can you therefore say that Justice is going to be served? The women on the street end up in prison for begging; it's a crime to beg according to this C ordinances, so they are arrested day in and day out. For me, this is something we have challenged as in my office as being a very gender-specific crime; it is seems to be targeting the women and the children begging; the fathers and the husbands of these women never show up, and no one is arresting them for allowing their children to be on the street. You know, so ND work, if we put in place an ecosystem that favors it, it cannot work in isolation; it seems to work for those that are privileged enough to have representation. You know, we do not have a public legal aid program yet, and I'm happy to be informed because I see so many lawyers on the call right now on how that would work, but I think especially women who are vulnerable, CU I know that more than 80% that you find in in prisons or many of those that have been so cannot afford representation, so they cannot participate in a substantive ADR, for lack of a better word, but they know that um, SGBV, say gender-specific courts, it's an innovation from the bench that, in my opinion, has helped resolve many cases, and it has worked, and something that needs to be studied some more and funded some more, but again because of I don't see lack of resources because Uganda has a lot of money, really, priority especially for women issues is a big challenge for us. I'll stop there and it over to you to make sense of what I just said. Thank you. I'm shifting back.

Thank you, Prim. I think now I shift back a bit to back to private legal practice, and I this add to Cindy. I understand Law Firm you have practiced almost for about a decade, even even when house cancer and still came back to private legal practice, and you have female colleagues who own law firms. So at this point I would like to understand from your from your view, how does the issue of case backlog affect women Le law firms and their clients, and what solutions could be employed to solve that issue? Thank you. I I I just want to speak about uh one of the innovations that has been championed over the last few years, uh, plea bargaining, just to just as a write on what Prima was explaining to us. Um, I think that one of the challenges we have is that when we import strategies from other jurisdictions, we don't align our domestic uh legal framework to some of the unique aspects of those foreign jurisdictions that make that uh those Solutions remain fair, and bargaining is one of those. Uh, we got this from the United States, where there is a time limitations within which prosecutors must try or um charge people with certain criminal offenses. We brought it to our case backlog infected uh jurisdiction where you can even serve the full sentence of what you would have been handed should you be convicted on remand before your case ever gets heard. And what that has ended up doing is it has given people no alternative but to accept convictions that they have no business accepting if the system was fair, because it's the only way out, to the extent that as as a as a private practitioner when I go down to plea bargaining camps to help um suspects and accused people with their negotiation of those plea bargaining agreements, that the general sense you get is that you know you're being done a favor to be given this chance to to confess and take a conviction, and and it is almost unheard of to to dispute whatever you're being handed, because should you not take it, let's say you're there for something that would have given you 3 years, you've probably already been there a whole year. So the fact that we don't have a time limitation within which persecutions must happen allows case backlog to really be abused, even when we have innovations like plea bargaining, because now you don't have a choice, really. You either accept the plea negotiation or you're stranded in prison for a much longer period. It's a ransom; it's a ransom for your freedom. Can you imagine how unfair it ends up being? The very tool that is supposed to correct an injustice is is perpetrating it deeper, and and I don't know whether practitioners have uh, and you know many times when we, private practitioners, go into these spaces, it always feels as though we are intruding or interfering with an already pre-arranged Arrangement between uh the bench and the prosecutors, and we are wiering and misleading the accused people about things that should otherwise be standard procedure. But when you think about what that conviction does for that person's whole life, and now they are being forced to exchange it for their freedom, I don't know, it it just becomes very unfair. So coming coming to to your question about um female colleagues and and what how we are interacting with with case backlog, I'll tell you that the terrain is already slanted when we go into negotiation rooms for work. Men will expect; male clients will expect that a female lawyer should take the case at half the price they would have paid Ellison if if I and Ellison were bargaining for the same work. Ellison will drop a figure that is probably double what the scale provides for; no one will argue with that. I will have to defend and uh uh justify and uh have some addons if it is a retainer. I you

Know so when, when, when, now you are faced with something like case backlog, already there is that impression almost that it is because you gave the case to a woman. Why did you? We told you these things are better handled by men, so case backlog multiplies and amplifies the biases, the unconscious biases and the stereotypes that exist about women in in litigation. And that's why I told you at the beginning that so for many of us, I know many female law firm, LED law firms, they give me a call and say, "Linda, cuz for you, you still do litigation, how do you handle..." You know, for many of them, litigation is dead business that they will do if it involves family or if it involves that one client that they cannot lose because he now has it to go through a divorce when he's the one paying a huge retainer in a commercial, in a commercial um, side of the business.

So you find that now when it comes to the actual practice, let me tell you many times, let's say your litigation, let's say you get pregnant when you really had counted on this case being settled by a certain date and then you have to end up on maternity leave. By the way, you people, these things are real; they are real because now, now, now, now I have to choose between breastfeeding my twins and showing up to court with breast pads that might leak. I, I've had really horrible stories about how judges treat women, the judicial discy that men, male judges, even female judges extend to female practitioners that are going through their motherhood challenges. I, I had a story once of a female practitioner. You know, you sit in court, you anticipate that your case, if your case is scheduled for 9, you anticipate that it's going to be called at maybe worst-case scenario 11 a.m., but you find yourself there at midday at 1 p.m. Do you know what happens when I have been breastfeeding twins and I step out from my uh role to come to a courtroom where I was hoping that I would get out in 3 hours? There's no blouse that I could wear that will control that flow of natur, it will be like this morning's flood, you know, and there I am.

And then, of all the things that the judge can take issue with, he decided to say, "Why is your blouse stained?" Yes, yes, I've heard stories about so I carried twins, and when I carried twins, my belly was so big it would enter a room for about 2 minutes before you saw my face, like it was that, you know, like someone is entering, then find like, "Oh, it's you." Now, of course, most of my dresses would not fit by the time some of the cases finally come to being heard. Now imagine, in addition to all my other troubles that morning, I must find a black dress, and I, I've been in court and watched a female judge dress down a female practitioner for wearing a maternity dress that was probably not black or white. And you're thinking to yourself, "Do you have any idea that when I first filed this case it should have ended before I even got married, but here I am 5 years later." I, I don't, I can't amplify or explain to you how much for your own dignity, sanctity, mental health, and so many other levels, women practitioners are shining or having to avoid litigation because of case backlog, because of the uncertainty that comes into our already uncertain worlds as a result of backlog. That's a question.

Um, Linda, just on that exact point, I think you raise a very interesting, sorry about that, I think you, you raise a very interesting uh point, which I think most young lawyers of a similar age group, I won't say like myself, but most young lawyers are thinking, thinking of, you know, you're making career decisions. Do you want to go down the path of maybe heavy litigation? Do you want to go into an in-house counsel role? Do you want to stay and do maybe corporate advisory and whatnot? And one of the assessments you make, because at the end of your career as a lawyer you'd want to have a level of specialty, you'd like to have a level of competence, you want to have some flight hours in court, for instance, you want to be able to say you've finished, you've had this number of judgments and rulings, and you've made these precedents and all these wonderful things, but the numbers don't look good on ULI, they don't, they don't look good when you walk into courts as well. Um, I want to understand from your perspective, and I think you've already made the point clear in terms of the challenges that women experience in being able to just be present in court and represent their clients. Do you think that case backlog, in in the way it stands right now, affects the ability of young lawyers to achieve specialty, competence, a good number of flight hours over time, and do you think that the approaches that exist at the Judiciary right now are, and are supporting, you know, young lawyers in anyway? But more importantly, I want you to help us understand what other creative ways we can, you know, what other things we can implement right now to support young female lawyers in particular, because I think this issue uniquely affects young female lawyers because the numbers don't lie. Thank you.

And, lar, it's a lot easier, by and large, it's a lot easier to amplify problems than it is to suggest the solutions, uh, but I say I told you earlier that I left uh Private Practice when I had been there 3 years and I went into uh in-house counsel role, and I was at that time uh in my first trimester of of my second daughter, and there was just no way I was going to find myself in, you know, the the life of a young, young female lawyer. You, you, you walk into office in the morning having your day planned out, maybe to do the pleadings in the cases that you have, and then you overhear your boss telling the client in Luo that, "I won't make it," this is probably like at 7 a.m., "I won't make it, I'm sending a young lawyer called Linda there." There, your, your day, and that's, that's, that's the reality as a litigation lawyer. You have to be prepared to be agile and flexible and swing whichever direction you have to swing, you know. Now I think that the challenges that, I think I, I can't sugarcoat it for a young lawyer, yeah, a young female lawyer, I really can't. Um, what I, what I think though is that you have to allow yourself the grace, like I said earlier, you, you, your clock is still ticking, case backlog nonetheless, your clock is still ticking, you have to allow yourself the grace to step away sometimes and concentrate on what is important. You can always come back to litigation. By the way, litigation is a lot more fun when you're a lot older, a lot more mature, a lot more able to bully the men as well, a lot more able to hold your ground, a lot more able to realize that uh, um a high-heel shoe is not most, is not the most important thing you need on a court day for your confidence, maybe some preparation instead. But these are, these are things that, these are things that if you say to a young lawyer, they'll think that you're just trying to project your old miserable life on them and your poor knees that can no longer wear high heels. So these are not things that a young lawyer will want to hear early, but, but in terms of how do we support young women, I think that as the the time has come, we've attracted so many young women into, into this glam, into this falsely glamorous life, you know, because what we project in the courtroom versus what it takes to keep that act at two different worlds that we're not honest about, even as female lawyers. Of course, the men are not honest at any level that one we are used to, but even as female lawyers we are not honest about what it takes, that all it takes.

And, and like I said to you, I came from a family where I had watched two previous generations suffer that false appearance, tall, and I had, I, I was alive to the reality of why I must choose family sometimes and not apologize for it at any level. So I will be in court, and if it is time to pick my children, I will seek that judgment. I don't care if opposite counsel gives me a side-eye. I don't care if the judge laughs at me, for me school pickup is the biggest time that I have with my daughters every day, and I'm not going to negotiate that because their lives are not standing still. So I think that as a bar we need to think about how to support women, especially young women. I've been saying to my PH Fe fellow female uh partners in law firms, "Can't we pull resources and, for example, have um medical insurance that targets particularly childbearing aspects so that we can be able to make sure that every law firm from the synergy of our, of our, of our combined effort can afford to have all the ladies because there's nothing more humiliating than for me having to submit my medical bills of my private issue to the accountant to get a refund or whatever other arrangements we currently try to maintain that exposes women and our privacy issues." Uh, I, I remember, I remember very well during my childbearing years, I remember being late for court, for example, on a day when I had um, let's say reproductive medical issue, and I remember one time my case was dismissed because I couldn't get to Mango in time, and I swore an affid, I, I, I, I applied for reinstatement and I had to be honest about what had happened, you know, and then I became the template in the firm, you know, when the male lawyers wanted their cases to be reinstated, "Doesn't have one of her medical affidavits, can she, can she help us and get this?" Because when it, as soon as you would say I had a reproductive, everyone will just want granted consent. Counsel, can't you consent to this master? I hear all this, somehow suddenly when we are really in trouble the men are willing to give us whatever we are asking for, but must it take manipulation? Can't we honestly, we are more than 5,000 now, and women are, I, I, I've been looking at the numbers, for example, in our female law firms, the women support team, the women advocates are the majority we are employing. When you think about the back ends of most law firms, by a good number of them is women. You know, at the front here you will see the male lawyers as the partners, but in the kitchen there, the majority of them are women, the ones who are churning out the pleadings, the ones who are turning out the submissions, the legal opinions, most of them are women because we are the ones that want to have as a desk job where no one is going to throw me to, to in the middle of my day, you know. So can't we start thinking about sustainable ways to support women as they go through these different challenges, things like medical insurance for for women, things like flexible financial um services for for the different packages that women need, you know, making sure that since we know that practice is really stepped against them, how are we going out of our way to support them better? Okay, thank you.

You see, I understand you have this for DEC, and this means you have a lot of litigation lawyers, and it shows that they have an amazing in litigation, however, you have noted that, okay, let's, let me see, let's, let's get back to C Prima. From your experience, you have really, you experience a lot of gender-sensitive cases, and you navigate a lot of them, and this really has an emotional trail on both the women lawyers and even the the litigants themselves, and even the lawyers handling so I like us to share with us your experience, how case backlog affects the gender-sensitive cases, especially on land and family disputes, and what solution could put in place to solve this challenges. Thank. I don't if PR you had, I think you're muted. I'm not sure I understood the question. I, there was um, I couldn't hear the person clearly. I just had challenges and what resolution I don't, talking in respect of the bog or yes, I think if I understood him, he's saying how, how the backlog affects um gender-sensitive cases, and you talked about land, but also about sexual and gender-based violence and family disputes, like how can you, if you look at the, the, you had, you had touched on this previously, but if you, if you really pick out, cuz I think Linda has focused on really the life of the practitioner, but what about the life of the client, that female client? I think maybe can, can build up on that as well. And yes, Prim, maybe just in, in addition to that, um, you mentioned the number of people who, the number of um ladies who are in the prisons, I would like to understand because access to Justice means access to representation as well, for some instances because few of these wom, and how they should present themselves in court, and if someone has to maintain a lawyer for about maybe five years, is that even feasible in your experience? Is that a feasible um, is that something that even happens? Cuz I know even like there are lifetimes for projects, if a project has to present uh, help represent a lady for about 5 years, is that something they even sustain? So access to Justice through access to representation is, in your experience, um, is that something the the women in prisons have access to, and the women that you interact with? And I think the other thing that my colleague was trying to bring was what alternatives or approaches do you think need to be um employed in order to act particular issues that are being faced. Alternatives, what operators do you think need to be um employed in order to address these particular issues that are being faced.

Um, okay, um, I believe really we have expounded on some of the the effects or challenges of backlog on women, and I mentioned the delayed Justice for cases taking long, uh, the emotional stress, um hopelessness that comes with having to wait forever to achieve Justice, sometimes even being forced into plead bains or pleas of guilty when one need not have that, but um, maybe I should focus more on what needs to be done. I think it's important. I have mentioned that more than 3,000 women lately go through the prison system on an annual basis, that is an increase of, you know, an increasing rate of more than 40%, alarming compared to the male incarceration rates in our country, which should be a cause for concern because if you think about it, even from a gender very biased position, our prison systems or Judicial Systems were not created to, to, to target or accommodate women. You'll find more prisons were built for men, so there's very few facilities for women, and that comes with challenges. Their own Linda mentioned, pra, from a practitioner's perspective, how even the courts are not, you know, the institutions are not framed to accommodate us in the practice. It seems like the practice is a male-dominated society, so if I am pregnant, I'm lactating and I need to breastfeed, the dress code needs to change, and you know, judicial officers should be able to accommodate that. And personally, I've also had an experience like Linda, um, two years ago I was also pregnant at some point, and in my case I wrote to the court to adj the case cuz I was on maternity leave, in fact that day was the day I gave birth, and counsel asked for costs because I think um, he said that you cannot seek an adjournment through a letter or something like that, and the judge gave a ruling that he will consider the cost in the main course. Unfortunately for him, that judge has been transferred, and now we are in a different case, and my daughter is now 2 years old. Funny, but it happens for the women as well, and I was thinking, "I'm going to be punished for going to give birth," you know, I was waiting for that decision so I can take the judge on personally, I was like, "I'll go and see him in Chambers," but also public in my activism, use him as a case study. I think lucky for him my case is going to have to go through a whole retrial, and I don't know what lawyer is going, what um counsel is going to be doing in the new trial, but um, for gender-specific cases it's important, and I think it requires more resources, funding to to address the backlog when it comes to SGBV cases, sexual violence cases which concern women, families are at stake when women come and they are pushed into the system for long, children are left without mothers, you know, as women we are caregivers. You might be a lawyer doing your 8 to 5 or 8 to 5 job, but as soon as you close your 5 job you then start at 6 to midnight caregiving, or, you know, you open.

M, chter Linda has already explained that as soon as she's closing arguments at 4 p.m., she is running to pick kids, she has to make dinner, put them to bed, help them with homework, you know, care for the husband, and that's unpaid care work, or something that we do not consider in the practice, causes a whole toll on the person providing the legal services as well, but even for the people, the clients in the system, when they are in the system and their cases are not being handled, the psychological torture, and I know most of the pleas I get from my women is, "Prima, my children are not going to school. Prima, who is bathing my children while I'm in prison? Prima, where..." Like, it's been, even if it's just a month, my children are getting lost, my children may get married, you know, the rate at which girls get pregnant in the absence of their mothers in this country is alarming. This entire week I've been telling people that Uganda has the youngest population on the globe, according to our statistics, Yos reported last year more than 50% of our population is under the age of 17. So imagine you end up in prison as a mother, you know, if you're above 17 years of age you're the 40% of this country, and that means we have lost a whole generation of people, just one or 2 months away from your children, you have lost them, they run to the world to care for them, and this is something that the prisons or the Judiciary is not looking at. You know, recently I had a very good dialogue with, I think it was Justice, I have mentioned working in, I presented, I found women with cases of up to four years that have never seen a day in court, and I work to the court, but did not follow up in December, like he mentioned, I did not have the resources to go back to, it's easier to work around Kampala and get funding for cases around Kampala, so I had written to the court to consider having a session for the women's prison, and when I went there in February to check on the cases we had put the the attention of the court, all the cases had been resolved, and I was told by the clerks that the judge held a women's session specifically for the women in Aonga prison, and all the cases had been disposed of, and um, I sent Justice W a message to say, "I, I was pleasantly surprised, I had not seen this happening in any court anywhere," and you know, for her, she told me that I had a gender-specific training that he informed us of the statistics of women in prison and that these are petty cases, and indeed when I looked at the cases that you had presented for your women in the paperwork before us, I noticed that indeed there were petty cases that I could dispose off with, you know, community sentences for those that she found guilty. I know I had women that even had mental health challenges, there was one that had killed her child while she was schizophrenic, she told me that she had voices telling her to kill the child and she squeezed the kid's neck until it fell dead, and then I think the demons left her and she confessed this in the court, and the medical people had confirmed and written to the prison authorities that this lady is schizophrenic, and that lady was in prison I think for 2 years, and when I looked at her file the judge had sent her to hospital, you know, he had released her and said, "Go and get me medication." I, I said, "So why did we have to keep her for so long and you know, clog the system for everyone else that needed a chance in court if otherwise," you know. So maybe trainings could be a solution, more funding to ensure, you know, the specific, you know, we...

I mentioned SGBV court sessions, and but I know that prosecutors and the bench usually say, “We need special funding for these.” Yes, game prioritizing funding towards these reported cases. But when it comes to land issues, I think it is also important for judges to be taken through trainings on the gender-specific issues when it comes to property rights. This person is only coming to, you know, claim an estate, you know, by association. “I’m from this family; these are my brothers.” Even though this is our culture, you know, I’m a human being that is recognized under the law. So if property is being divided, so much even I should receive something like this. So beyond just what we know and the norms and the culture, and when we come to the bench, we come as a people, but we also come with our cultural knowledge and all of that. So it’s important that those are brought to the attention of judges or people at the bench because in most cases, there are nuances that are not apparent to them when they are in court. I will leave that to lawyers and that they have ongoing litigation. However, you noted that so many female lawyers avoid litigation, and most of them have given up on litigation to pursue other careers. So do you think that we risk losing future women litigators to this current system where it is becoming harder to get justice in courts? And then how can—which—how can mentorship and legal training be restructured to prepare young women lawyers for a system hampered by chronic delays and case backlog in courts? Thank you.

Al canu, I think that—I think that we have to be alive to the different cautious biases and stereotypes that affect women when we go to train them. I’ll tell you that the reason I have not given up on my teaching career yet—I will soon give up—but one of the reasons why I keep teaching is because I don’t want to create the impression for young female law students that only men can litigate, that only men can hold their own or practice the things that we teach. And I can tell you that over the time, over the years, particularly when I headed the teaching of trial advocacy at the Law Development Center, I saw female lawyers—female students really excel at trial advocacy. I think that for all the four years I headed that subject, all the best female lawyers—all the best students in trial advocacy were female. And I don’t think that that was um, just by chance. I think that it’s when female students envision themselves succeeding in something when they see you model it. And I say to female practitioners all the time, every time you don’t teach, every time you don’t participate in these skill-building programs, you unconsciously send a message to female law students that they can’t do this, that they have to be a man in order to succeed at this.

Then the second part is that, so as when I teach, for example, I know that even when a female student has a correct answer, they’re going to be sitting there, imposter-syndrome-ing themselves, second-guessing themselves, while the male student who has the wrong answer is going to be shooting his hand up and insisting that he should be picked. So I—I insist; I call them out. And I think that every teacher must go into the classroom alive to those stereotypes so that you—you—you peel those layers off as you train them, so that you—you insist to them. I tell female lawyers all the time, “Yes, of course you’re going to be nervous, that’s—that’s normal.” Don’t expect that your voice is not going to disappear for the first sentence that you had planned. So don’t leave the first sentence to chance. And I think that when you train female lawyers, when you train law students to be self-aware about their uh, sort of gender-based disadvantages, you empower them to address them and to prepare. You know, they say women have to work or have to be twice as good to get half the—the—the respect or the—and whatever cooperation they need from the court or from opposing counsel. So for us, particularly as women, we don’t have as much patience from the court, for example. When we are cross-examining, you know, a man can cross-examine on nonsense for about 30 minutes, and the judge will probably be enjoying the depth of his voice and will not stop him. While for you, on your fifth question, if you’re not going anywhere, the judge is already looking at his watch and, you know, giving you this eye of, “Where is this going?” You have to be alive to that when you skill yourself. And for me, I have found it a blessing because half the time, if I’m against someone that does not know me, they’re going to underestimate me, and that’s what I need them to be doing when I go up against them. So rather than pity ourselves and feel sorry for ourselves and, you know, whine about how all these things are stacked against us, I think that you can actually take it in stride and make sure that you take the very thing that should be holding you back and you use it to anchor yourself and to spring yourself forward.

So I think that particularly for training programs—I’ll tell you that the reason that we’ve been running the trial advocacy training program with the ULS for the last 17 years, I think this year, since 2009, is particularly for that because there is something about male upbringing that makes them more successful as litigators because litigation is a fight, you know, it’s a—it’s a—it’s an adversarial system that steps you up to fight an opponent, and men are prepared for that all their lives. On the other hand, we are prepared to be graceful, to concede, to, you know, defer to. So you must really restructure that. I—I—I’ve had to be tough, be out of my character when I know that I’m dealing with a bully because I am aware that right now this judge I’m dealing with is a bully, and that has nothing to do with me; it’s not my hairstyle, it’s not the color of my shoe, and all those things that society will, in, you know, almost indirectly blame us for. You, when you are skilled to see through those lenses, they won’t throw you off your goal. But thinking about how we make workplaces and courts more—more alive and more supportive for us as female litigators, I think Prima already talked about some of the things, you know, things like programs, practical programs that support us when we’re going through the motherhood curve. One of the things that really breaks my heart is that female lawyers—the law as a profession attracts some of the strongest women to it because, I mean, you have to have some level of insanity as a woman to choose law as a—as a choice of course. But it also takes us away from raising other generations of similarly strong women because it forces us to abandon our motherhood challenges to nannies, to maids, to all kinds of—all kinds of support structures because of the whole mentality that, you know, everything is urgent, so there’s this deadline, you can’t, you know. So what is ending up happening is that we carry the burden much later in our careers when now our children should be dependent, should be out there killing it like we killed it when we were young. We end up with children that were not raised; we don’t give a piece of ourselves, a piece of our strength because of these structured differences. And for me, I, as a woman, I’m always alive to that. I know that if I don’t raise my children now, I’m going to be cleaning up messes later, and I don’t want that, and I don’t want anyone—I don’t want any woman to be under the false impression of paying such a high price for it. So things like that: lactating rooms, things like nurseries. I have pictures of my kids in waiting rooms in courtrooms when I—when I end up in court. If I have to pick them up, and they know that—they think is indefinite, they know that they have to go to the secretary if they need something. And women don’t have that courage to do crazy things like that. Even things like what I spoke about earlier: health insurance for—for—for particularly maternity issues, that should be non-negotiable. And then when you think about things like flexible um, performance measures, you know, a man can be measured by his presence in the office, how—not even just how he’s dressed, but the fact that he leaves at 8:00 p.m. and comes by 6:00 a.m. How—why should that be my measure also? Am I also idle at home? Do I also have nothing to do for my family like he does? And yet for most of our law firms, that’s a measure, you know, “Yeah, but he’s always here, so that’s why we’re giving him the big files.” What do you mean? Why don’t you instead give me a goal? Why don’t you gauge my performance to specific results instead of how many people can stay in the bar with the boss, how many can tell the boss good stories late into the evening? I don’t have time for that, and I shouldn’t have to have time for that in order for me to progress further into my career. And then structures around the vices in our—in our—in our—in our profession. Sexual harassment is a big issue, and I don’t think that we do enough as law firms to address it. We have a no sexual harassment policy at Amber; for us, the work environment must be as positive as it can be, and our staff members know that whether it is a clerk who hits on them or a client or opposing counsel, they know that they can tell me, and they know that I will go and address that issue immediately. And so many times when I have had to reign in, for example, clerks, they know—they know my girls; they’ll say, “But how many of us go out of our way to provide that kind of comfort and support for our girls?” Well, knowing that these are things they face every day going through our court system, and especially since it’s backlog that we’re talking about, the whole sense of that: when I start a case, I’m going to be stuck with this clerk who is probably, you know, finding every moment to comment about whichever part of my body pleases or displeases him for five years. That becomes the thing about efficiency is that when things work well for women, when things work well for everyone, women benefit; when they don’t work well, women suffer more. So I think that addressing those things doesn’t have to be gender-sensitive for it to have a gender benefit for us as women. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Linda, for that. Um, I had promised to end this space early, but I don’t want us to end it without—I promised—I promised to actually end the space early, but I don’t want to—I don’t want to end it without us going to one of the issues which I wanted us to discuss. And uh, after everything I’ve heard about how men are doing nothing at home, they can—they can be in office at eight, and how uh, Linda’s children know that um, they sit in court and therefore they understand things like res judicata and um, points of law, and also about how Prima has—has to pay some costs for giving birth. After all of that, I think it is important nonetheless to move to one other issue if you don’t mind, just one other issue, and then we start closing the conversation on these Judicial Service conversations. I’m going to start with Prima on this Judicial Service conversations. We’ve been talking for the last few weeks about backlog generally, and we’ve been talking about backlog in the sense that it—it—it um, it’s stifling the economy, it’s affecting—and now we are hearing how—how it’s breaking down into real cases. And we have—we’ve—we’ve closed two of the Constitution. It provides that where Article 142, Clause 2C of the Constitution provides that where the—the Chief Justice shall inform the Judicial Service Commission where the state of the business of the court so requires, the President, on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission, can appoint judicial officers to get in and help solve the problem. We have a huge problem of backlog. Just imagine that 70-year-old woman, Prima, that you’re telling us about, that 70-year-old woman looking for justice in a divorce case because she has been beaten for 50 years of her life. And our question is, wouldn’t this idea of mission-based judges—wouldn’t it benefit people? First of all, I think a lot of women can be mission-based judges, and I think the two of you, for example, would bring a fantastic perspective to—to the Judiciary. I mean, I’m here embarrassed to have a conversation at 8:43 because I’ve been told that men are doing nothing at home, so—but so maybe I’ll start with you, Prima, if you could just—so our—our argument has been we need to have a mission-focused Judiciary. We can’t continue to have the sort of backlog where the whole of Changó is full of prisoners because of an interpretation issue, because of lack of a judicial officer, because of um, people being charged with the offense of wandering that you’ve just told us about. So how—our contention has always been mission-based judges, and—and what the role women can play as mission-based judges. And maybe Prima, you could go—you could go ahead with this. Um, I promise you we’re winding up very soon. I told you women can’t meet with us. I promise you. Yeah, I know. I told you that we play childcare roles, so it’s dinner time, and children want to eat with us and help them go to bed. So either does—we speak national issues and contribute to the narrative we need to—that at the back of our mind. Maybe even in organizing the space and the time frames we choose when to have a good time. Give and say but—are women on the—if I can interrupt you—if I can interrupt you statistically—more men now—having the largest number of women that we—and we can—I see—I see a bigger fraction of numbers as the host from here. I can tell you that statistically speaking more men now, we are having the largest number of women that we have had before, and—and we can—I see—I see a bigger fraction of numbers as the host from here. I can tell you that, and many women as speakers today, they’ve come to support us. Yes, yeah. Thank you for that, though. Um, I think mission-based judges or judicial system would be really good in helping us manage the—the backlog. I have seen the—the Chief Justice even in the new lawyer decrying this as, you know, overly—I think one of his biggest achievements he says is being able to recruit more judges to manage this, but it’s still a challenge. I have worked in Gulu, and there was a time when the—the person who was head at Gulu was also in charge of I think Kitgum and the region at some point. Now I know that there’s a High Court in—but, you know, you get to his chambers, just look at the files; he will be like, “I was in Kitgum,” and you see that backlog. I have to look at—and there’s you coming from Kampala, and you know, sometimes when we are coming from Kampala, you’re going to court, we appear in that—the judge will—“I’ll start with lawyers coming from so far,” while going with those that stay around. And you know, you got to demand for your judgment from a judge—just look at the files; they are going up to the roof, and you just walk out because you feel, you know, for sure that maybe your case is not even the most urgent case they should handle. But if we had mission-based judges, those systems or courts, I—I think it would help manage the backlog and reduce on the number of cases that have to be handled by, you know, one judge in a whole region, say where more than, you know, 5,000—I know I have also done some work in Mbale and that side, and I think two years ago Mbale had the highest number of prisoners on pre-trial detention, you know, they just needed a judge to be there, shed sessions for them. And I know they’ve been making these appointments lately. You could say merit-based, but um, on trial—are we calling it trial? You can correct me. Mission-based, but anything you want to call it, feel free. Yeah, they’re not sure, so you don’t know the judges want to act on tension, more like performance-based. If they don’t perform, then they might not be confirmed, which I think could also affect access to justice as a—a con on the other side. It might help increase efficiency, manage the case load, maybe even accountability, and say, “Hey, we had 5,000 cases; now we have 200. I have been able to manage this in this criminal session,” and all of this, you know. And for me, I think that is a good thing, something we should invest more in because I also believe it will help improve on case management because there’s quite a number of judicial officers that will be able to handle. And I think a good example is Mbarara High Court that it used to be notorious for backlog of cases, but lately Mbarara, I think has three judges on site, and they still have a lot on their desks, but too much has been handled, and a lot has been cleared out of the system, which I think is a good thing. We can bring on board more seasoned lawyers; there’s too many lawyers that would even be willing to volunteer time on the bench, but that is not present or not being used. So I think that is um, a good option that we can explore; it might help many—many—many women—my ladies who have been in prison for so long waiting for trial, or these people that are waiting to get their divorce. Unfortunately, there’s even cultural issues that have—you know—that affect the dispensation of—of justice. But I think if we have—thank you so much—and—of people that we—to go to your take—makes it easy to access justice; that’s what I think about that. Over to you.

When I think about how urgent so many of—or the sense of urgency with which litigation is approached—and—and the sacrifice we are often forced to pay, for example, pleadings are time-bound, huh? Preparing for trial is time-bound, huh? You’ve been in court when the judge gives you three days to—to find submissions when you know that the judgment will not come for another three months. And I want to ask, can we have the same—if you’re giving me just a week when I—when I know that this judgment is not going to come for another six months? Why is the urgency only on our side? I think that we have normalized case backlog; we have gotten used to case backlog. I remember the first time I was shocked by case backlog was that—that—that incident I told you about when my mother was—when we were thrown out of the home we—we grew up in after we got the interim orders and were now um, settled back in and needed the suit to proceed to trial. For me and my mom who were new to the whole system, two years before the thing is hard was a long time. So we went to seek audience with the judge who was hearing the case, and we told him, “We are worried; it’s been two years.” And then he said, “Two years? Your case is still very young.” And indeed, let me tell you guys, you know what I ended up doing for that case? We filed it in 2007; 10 years later it had still not taken off. This was in the land division. The guy who threw us out of the house had died; the lawyer who helped him throw us out had died; the people from whom the—the house had—had been fraudulently possessed had, of course, died; were deceased. My—of course, my own dad was dead. And I remember sitting in court that morning when the case was called and still the defendants were not in court, and I looked at these pleadings and I realized that my mom was the only alive person on those—on the face of the record. Only me and my mom were still alive from when that case had started. And you know what I did? I sat and watched the case be buried. The case was called; the judge asked the clerk to go outside and also call. I sat there just looking; I just made up my mind, “Let this case be dismissed, and we accept that we lost the home we grew up in. I shall find whatever money my mom wanted from this case from my personal sweat, and I shall compensate her.” Because in that—

Moment I thought to myself, we are the only ones who have life, and yet we are here 10 years later, still fighting with all these deceased people. And my mom has never forgiven me; she reminds me to this date that I withdrew her case. I allowed her case to be dismissed without her consent because, for me, in that duality of being both counsel and litigator, I was honestly fed up. So why have we normalized case backlog? For me, that normality is what makes us look at the solution, such as the one in article 142e, as out of this world and strange and too much. If we really considered case backlog to be as abnormal as it truly is, the innovation of a solution like this would be an absolute no-brainer. It would be like, of course we must, because for sure the business of the Court demands it.

And when you think about, for example, I know so many fine practitioners that will never apply to be judge, that are never interested in being a judge. And listening to the last space you had, and I know many South Africans, and um, I've had the opportunity of uh training across Africa, and I know that in southern Africa, both Botswana and South Africa, they do, they have these acting judges. I have friends of mine, litigators; when it's their turn to be an acting judge, we all know that we can't contact them. We know that they're out of the office. We know that they've signed up to help the court in this particular period, and we must all accord them the space and whatever they need to fulfill it.

So I think, for example, if I had, let's say, all the fine lawyers that I can think about, if I was to think about someone like, like maybe Peter Waru, who of us would not want Peter to decide our land cases if they were stuck there? I mean, it's a, it's a. So there's always the option to appeal against whatever; it's not like it's a dead end, that if you're dissatisfied with the decision you have no way out. No, but at the, at some point we must get mad enough and dissatisfied enough with the state of affairs to be innovative about the solutions. And if the Constitution envisaged this way back in 1995, then why is it taking that long for us to consider the option? Okay, fantastic. I think I think the case has been made more eloquently than I ever could tonight. I think I don't want to take any more time; people have dinner to have, and people to put to bed, and people don't have nothing to do at night, but tonight I think it's fair to say we've had some hard truths, we've had about injustice, and we've had some powerful solutions. We have had testimonies. You know, I read somewhere that they overcame the Enemy by the word of their testimony, and I think tonight we've had testimonies, testimonies from generals on the front line of legal practice, testimonies from giants of our profession.

And uh, without, we usually go around to say goodbye, but without going around to say goodbye, I think, and in the interest of time, allow me to thank you so much Prima and Linda for taking your evenings off and for coming here to share your experience and your thoughts with those of us who came to listen. And I can tell you we have been challenged, we have been inspired, we have been blessed to sit here and listen, and we have also been humbled. For the justice system, it is becoming increasingly clear that we can no longer afford to wait. Justice is not an aspiration; we must, it must not just be aspirational, it must become operational. We must understand that apart from hearing hard truths, it's time we got powerful solutions. We are not just going to lament; we need to act. And for me, I think the case for a serious root and branch review of our justice system, from the facilities that we have in our courts to the use of technology in our hearings to the deployment of more judicial officers, including mission-based judges, I think a serious rethink has to be thought about how justice is delivered as a service. And I am very humbled for this conversation, and um, maybe I can just give Prima and um Linda just final words, um, and I will give the final words on behalf of my friends Mery and Alfred. I'll start with you, Prima.

Thank you. It's an absolute honor for me to be on this place to share with you all. Thank you for the platform and the space to do this, and um, yeah, I hope that these conversations can lead to some meaningful interventions so we can end the impunity that is perpetrated or perpetuated by the system against people we serve. I hope that this is the beginning of many more constructive dialogues to bridging the gender gap also in access to justice. We cannot do it alone as women, but I don't think the male gender can proceed alone without us as well. We must be willing and able to accommodate one another, and you know, sometimes we have to be very deliberate at this. And I want to thank you for for deliberately pulling out or pushing us to be on this space to share this, 'cause I can affirm that this is the time I'm interacting with my children as well, so I'm not always on the spaces. But because you called me out now I'm like, oh okay, wait, we must be here, and I had to be there, and I commit to making time to with my children as well, so are not always on the spaces because you called me out now I'm like, oh okay, wait, we must be here, and and I had to be there, and I I comm I voices with PR much say thank you for getting us out of our our our motherhood tonight.

Um, like I said when we started, the bad luck of this indefinite campaign season has given us the blessing of introspection, to ponder and go beyond the mere rhetoric of campaign seasons and really think about the solutions to to the challenges that our profession faces. Uh, the previous lawyers, the the lawyers when I think about the lawyers that came before us, they they did so much to attract us to the profession, to model for us how successful we could be at this, to show us how justice could be delivered, and we can't be the generation that sits and whines and and complains only. As we we've gotten good at these conversations, really are a positive space in thinking about solutions, being the contribution we need to be to the bar. So thank you Ellison for for having them, and good luck with the rest of this indefinite but wonderful opportunity. Thank you. Thank you so much everybody who has come to to to listen to us. You've heard it; we need to end impunity, bridge the gender gap. You've heard it here; the blessing of the long campaign is the blessing of introspection, and of course what we've been saying, um, and Alfred likes to to to likes the song very much; I'm sure you'll hear from him very soon. Uh, what we've been saying is nobody can stop Reg, and and that is really what it is; this long campaign is Reg now. Um, from me though to everybody who has joined us, to everybody listening from wherever you are, thank you for coming, thank you for listening, and from all of us to all of you, as we always say, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night, in the in the everywhere in, but somebody respect the the only one for.