Flavia Nabugere Munaaba

Flavia Nabugere Munaaba is reforming the criminal justice system in Uganda to ensure defendants’ rights to due process and fair trials. Flavia builds a network of public defenders to promote access to justice for prisoners as a basic human right. Flavia facilitates pro-bono representation (often through recent law school graduates) for victims and offenders through “justice access points,” or parallel tribunals. At the same time, Flavia reforms the justice system from within, working with law enforcement to better prepare cases for court. Her organization is the first in Uganda to openly promote legal rights for prisoners, providing direct aid to those without representation.

Flavia is improving access to legal services on a national level. Through her organization, the Public Defenders Association of Uganda (PDAU), she provides legal aid to Ugandans stuck in prisons without fair trial, and improves existing structures in the legal system so that government is more accountable and transparent in handling criminal cases. Her system of legal access points, which relies on close relationships with district courts and resident law firms, avails a pro-bono lawyer to represent defendants in need of legal assistance. Ugandan law school students volunteer their time, gaining needed practice experience while representing prisoners who have waited months or years to be heard in court. In addition, she pushes for system reforms—including new integrated databases—that will enable courts to more efficiently process the accused.
PDAU has already reduced the length of time the accused spend in prison waiting for their cases to be heard in court. Flavia’s work represents a turning point in Uganda’s justice system: Lawyers, judges, police, and other institutions are being challenged to work professionally and efficiently, and ultimately to turn justice from an exclusive privilege to a basic right for all Ugandans. PDAU is the first organization in Uganda to promote the legal rights of prisoners.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies a total of 26,126 Ugandans are being held in a total of 200 prisons across the country. The official capacity of Ugandan prisons is quoted at 9,048 prisoners. The occupancy level is therefore 211.3 percent and forecasts show that the number of prisoners will continue to rise. There are more accused prisoners in Uganda than actual convicts. Over half of the total prison population (58 percent) are pre-trial detainees or remand prisoners. The Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) visited a number of prisons and reported that out of the 13,000 in Central Government Prisons, about 8,000 were persons on remand or awaiting trial.

Uganda’s criminal justice system began to decline in the 1970s under dictatorial regimes. Most notably, the decline started with the persecution of judges and lawyers under the regime of the late Idi Amin and led to a massive exodus of these professionals. This trend continued through the dictatorships that followed until the 1980s when the current President Yoweri Museveni took power. This decade of fear saw a near collapse of the justice system and President Museveni has somewhat restored the system.

However, new challenges have emerged. The system is now plagued with corruption and inefficiency. Lawyers and magistrates tend to see their careers not as an opportunity to promote justice in society, but rather as a way to make huge economic gains. There is widespread mismanagement of bail fees, which has cut off an important source of funding for the judiciary. Many judges and lawyers now give preference to profitable cases and have abandoned their oath to volunteer a percentage of their time to represent Ugandan citizens on a pro bono basis. Government attempts to enforce the pro bono quarter system are still met with hostile protests from the lawyers. The distribution of courts and prisons compared to legal representation is worrying. Many districts, especially in rural areas that have courts, with resident magistrates and local government bodies lack lawyers as most prefer to work in major cities. Although the government has established more magisterial areas and appointed at least twenty new judges, the number of judges in the higher courts is still very low.

Lawyers, judges, the police, and other institutions with roles in the justice system have frustrated the process of dispensing justice. Each time a case is heard in court, a prosecuting and defense lawyer, judge/magistrate, prison official and police all have to be present. In many instances, cases are postponed because one of these officials does not show up in court. This situation has been worsened by the lack of a proper monitoring system to track cases and ensure that they are concluded efficiently.

The government itself has publicly displayed its disregard for the judiciary. On a number of occasions government has gone against High Court rulings, including twice raiding the High Court premises and re-arresting treason suspects that had been granted bail. The result has been an unacceptable number of untried suspects in Ugandan prisons. Even worse, wider Ugandan society has lost faith in the judiciary’s ability to protect them.

Flavia is helping Ugandans access justice efficiently to reduce the number of untried detainees in Ugandan prisons and to restore public trust in the judiciary. Balancing the number of courts and prisons with adequate legal representation is her first goal. She has set up a number of access points where citizens can easily get pro bono legal representation in courts. An access point is a legal structure attached to a district magistrate’s court or a Resident State Attorney’s office. By leveraging existing government structures, Flavia can spread her legal aid quickly and inexpensively. The access point employs a pro bono lawyer to represent detainees whose cases have not been heard or the accused who may lack legal representation.

Flavia has also engaged fresh graduate lawyers in the system. She saw that the main challenge young graduates of Ugandan law schools have is to acquire a practicing certificate and to gain the experience necessary to open up job opportunities. So she turned her access point system into an opportunity for young lawyers. By representing a number of citizens in court, they acquire experience and Flavia’s organization helps them with the application and fees for their practicing certificate. In return, the overflow of Ugandan detainees receive free representation from up and coming lawyers. Flavia recognizes that PDAU cannot offer an attractive career for most of the ambitious young Ugandan lawyers so she allows them to pursue careers with higher paying law firms after a period of service. To ensure continuity, each access point employs a fresh graduate and an intern. Once ready to leave, the graduate hands over to the intern, who then recruits another intern—a cycle that includes training peers as lawyers to pass in and out of the PDAU.

So far, Flavia has opened up access points in four districts: Kampala, Masaka, Jinja, and Mbarara. Together the access points delivered legal aid to 1,116 detainees in 2006 and targeted 1,080 legal aid cases in 2007. She expects to spread the access points nationally in five years with one access point per district.

Flavia is cognizant of the need for internal reform of the justice system to support and further the successes of her new structure. She has developed a database of cases that helps monitor the progress of each case handled by PDAU, and flags those in need of urgent attention. Her database also documents the number of detainees pending trial in prisons and brings attention to these cases. Flavia shares these tools with other members of the Justice Law and Order Sector, including the Legal Aid Service Providers Network, an organization Flavia helped found that brings together actors in the law profession to facilitate sharing of information and advice on legal aid cases.

Flavia has recognized a trend in the cases she has handled since venturing into the legal aid field. Of every 1,000 cases she handles every year, 800 are cases of sexual abuse and the offenders are youth. Flavia now sees crime prevention as vital part of her work. Reducing the number of young people detained will have significant impact on the prison and justice systems. Her new behavior change program aims to educate young people on crime, their rights, and other people’s rights. The program targets young Ugandans and works with them to reduce sexual abuse offences.

Although born to a relatively comfortable middle-class family, Flavia had to overcome major obstacles to carve out a career in law and rise to the level of magistrate. When she was only 4- years-old, her family fell apart. After her father was relieved of his duties as a priest, the family became polygamous. He eventually abandoned Flavia and her siblings to fend for themselves for a time and all four children lived with their grandparents. Flavia was the most creative of her father’s children. She started running small businesses to raise income for the family. By her eleventh birthday, she could make her own clothes and within a few years she had opened a clothing shop. She later ventured into the refreshment business, turning her shop into the leading wholesale beer supplier in her home town.

Her career as a lawyer was characterized by a series of innovations. She created the Chain Linked approach to criminal justice after noticing that court cases were frustrated by the absence of lawyers, judges, and prison officials for simple reasons. The system promoted responsibility among all these players to ensure speedy conclusion of cases. The program is run today by the Department for International Development of the British Government as the Chain Linked Initiative. She was also instrumental in starting The Justice, Law and Order Sector and the Legal Aid Service Providers Network to promote greater coordination and information sharing in the justice system.

However, her career was not without major challenges. Her application for magistrate was blocked twice, and only eventually approved because of her perseverance. Her career was also marred with threats to her life while she was the supervisor of the courts and unearthed numerous cases of corruption in the justice system. With only two weeks to her promotion from magistrate to judge, she resigned to start the Public Defenders Association of Uganda to work full-time to promote the legal rights of prisoners in Uganda.