Since the introduction of environmental law in Uganda in the mid 1990s, various Ugandan institutions have held a variety of training activities to build capacity and awareness of environmental law and improve access to environmental justice. Awareness and training has been carried out in four general areas: (1) introduction to environmental law, (2) principles of environmental management, (3) procedural issues in environmental law, and (4) access to environmental justice.
In 1995, UNEP in collaboration with NEMA held two back-to-back Africa regional workshops in Kampala for lawyers from the Anglophone and Francophone countries, in which about 10 Ugandan lawyers were exposed to environmental litigation. Starting in 1997, Greenwatch (a Ugandan NGO) partnered with NEMA, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and various institutions from Uganda and East Africa (including universities) to train judges, magistrates, private lawyers, state attorneys, and public interest lawyers on environmental law and litigation (including aspects of criminal environmental prosecution). Workshops typically trained 20-40 people at a time. One series of workshops focused on building capacity of the judiciary (including magistrates), while another targeted over 150 state attorneys and public prosecutors. As a result of the training courses, many judges and a growing number of magistrates are now well-versed in substantive and procedural matters related to environmental law.
Moreover, the public and private sector attorneys who prosecute environmental cases are better equipped to bring environmental cases before a judiciary that has the capacity to decide those cases.
In addition to building capacity, the training courses have yielded valuable materials. The course materials that have been developed, tested, and refined are in the process of being developed into a casebook on environmental law and a handbook on environmental law (see case study on “Uganda’s Casebook and Handbook on Environmental Law” following Guideline 43
).
For more information, contact Mr. Kenneth Kakuru at kenneth@greenwatch.or.ug