Women lawyers force big rights gains in Uganda
This spring, a small group of lawyers helped overturn laws that gave men more rights than women.
from the June 14, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"A lot of the women don't even know that they are not legally married," says Rose Nsenge, sitting in her office with Juliet Makumbi, a repeat client.
Ms. Makumbi says she had been unable to persuade her former partner to provide assistance for her and her children until she sought legal advice. "I failed in all other places," she says.
Ms. Nsenge used prolonged mediation, a technique the lawyers call alternative dispute resolution, to get the partner to provide financial support.
Nsenge says that dispute resolution is the group's most commonly used method to settle domestic affairs.
FIDA-U says its success rate with mediation is about 60 percent, a number the lawyers attribute to the fact that many of their clients' partners fear going to court.
A few doors down the hall, Jennifer Nakibuka is in a similar situation. Dressed in a man's red-plaid shirt and long black skirt, Ms. Nakibula says that she was thrown out of her house by her partner when he found out she was pregnant.
She says she was forced by an uncle into a marriage in which she was the second wife. The marriage lasted less than two years.
But her problem arose because the marriage was not legal, and the Ugandan Constitution does not have a notion of common law marriage.
Nakibula came to FIDA-U because, as she says, "I have nothing at all, and here I could come for free."
Proscovia Nakanjako, her lawyer, has succeeded though dispute resolution in getting the partner to finally begin giving assistance in the last weeks of Nakibula's pregnancy.
"I enjoy helping these women succeed, and these cases have actually helped women on a daily basis," says Ms. Namono. "We are reaching out into the villages to create awareness about the rulings," she adds.
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