Stop Militarising the Justice System!

The 31st of January 2025 will remain a heavily referenced day in the legal and political history of Uganda. It was a day of celebration for the rule of law as the supreme court declared the trial of civilians in military courts unconstitutional for among other reasons the court not being independent and hence not capable of according civilians the right to a fair trial, a universally inalienable right. However, the events since that day only prove one point: the struggle for the ideals of rule of law and fundamental human rights is still but a dream for us in Uganda.

Recently, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) parliamentary caucus resolved to amend the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) Act to allow civilians found in illegal possession of certain firearms to be tried in military courts. That the resolution to amend that came at lightning speed unlike resolutions on many other crucial matters, is not an isolated event.  It is another block in a wider pattern of the government creeping the military into the public institutions. The past few years have seen the growing incorporation of the military into almost every sector, from MDAs, parastatals to the police and parliament. According to a 2024 report (Guns, bread and butter. Militarization of Economic Sectors and Public Institutions in Uganda: A Socio-Legal Analysis) by the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), Uganda has in recent years increasingly relied on military structures to control civilian affairs, right from agriculture to healthcare and parliamentary debates. This militarisation has ensured entrenched inequality, eroded community livelihoods and normalized violence as a means of governance. The fishermen have more tales to tell in this regard.

Amending the UPDF Act to extend military jurisdiction to civilians under any circumstance only deepens this crisis. Military courts, by their very nature are designed to enforce discipline within the armed forces. They operate under strict chains of command rather than the impartial principles of justice that govern civilian courts. Insistence on subjecting civilians to military tribunals is a blatant step towards normalizing state violence and suppressing political dissent. It is indeed not surprising that outside of conflict zones, most of the civilians who have been accused persons in these courts are mainly figures from the political opposition. Recent reports of supporters of the National Unity Platform who were forced to plead guilty to charges in exchange for their liberty proves the point that much more goes on behind the scenes in these military courts.

Presuming that our dear parliamentarians took the time and work to appreciate the rationale behind the supreme court decision, they are well aware that that it was a strong warning against trampling constitutional safeguards to make way for human rights violations and institutionalisation of political oppression, because none of these is component of a free and fair democratic society.  I think it is important to understand that militarisation moves in opposite directions with democracy as stated by Babatunde O. in his 2015 Article (Democratization and The Military in Nigeria: A Case for an Enduring Civil-Military Relations in the Fourth Republic and Beyond). In there, he makes a very interesting case that perhaps needs to be reproduced for emphasis and context.

“The military’s emphasis is on…discipline and obedience. Democracy places a premium on non-conformity and freedom of thought and expression. The emphasis is on constant questioning of authority, discussion of issues and consideration of policy options that are non-violent and respectful of the lives of others…the military addresses the extreme and the extraordinary while democracy, addresses the routine, the military values discipline, and hierarchy, democracy, freedom and equality, the military is oriented to law and order, democracy to diversity, contradiction and competition, the method of the military is violent aggression, that of democracy is persuasion, negotiation, and consensus … .”

Our history as a country has an overflow of oversteps by the military being sanctioned by the executive and in some cases the legislature too. The 1966 military coup by Milton Obote, the 1971 takeover by Idi Amin, the chief army commander at the time and the events that followed thereafter. All these were possible primarily because of the authority granted to the military by the regimes of the time.

More still, are various examples of the use of the parliament to make laws with the effect of overturning court decisions. The Obote regime did this, the Amin regime did this and there are even more instances in this NRM regime despite the existence of Article 92 of the 1995 constitution that prohibits Parliament from passing laws that alter court decisions. Now, the NRM caucus persists on this trend, in the hope of bulldozing constitutional principles for short-term political convenience.

This comes at a time as we gear up for 2026 elections while mistrust of the government coupled with political polarisation and fear of the security forces is at an all-time high. We have already seen these tribunals being used as a tool against political opponents like Kizza Besigye who is currently under incarceration. Military tribunals have long been used to intimidate and silence government critics. They not only lack the procedural safeguards but also operate under military command, and have been known to deliver swift, harsh sentences with little regard for due process. For this we need to look no further than Lawyer Eron Kizza’s hurried conviction and sentencing on flimsy charges, or the hasty death sentences imposed on some accused persons around a decade back in Northern Uganda. Therefore, the fear of misuse of the system is well-founded. The argument by President Museveni and pro-military justice advocates that military courts have helped quicken the administration of justice is blind to the components of the non-derogable right to a fair hearing under Articles 28 and 44 of the Ugandan Constitution and internationally recognised standards. If military courts ever worked in the trial of civilians, they did so for a temporary and transitional period and thus cannot be justified into creating a parallel criminal justice system to that already in place. The resolution by NRM to send civilians back to military courts is creating a parallel justice system of judicial militarism where civilians and more so the political opponents can be prosecuted under opaque, unaccountable processes.

Uganda’s justice system is already grappling with among other things political interference, systematic corruption and underfunding. I think the NRM caucus should put focus on resolutions to solve these problems and strengthen the civilian institutions, not handing civilian cases over to the military through unconstitutional statute amendments. The criminal justice system is not a battlefield and should never be clothed in military attire. Tampering with the constitutional safeguards is no jackpot but a bullet in our own foot.

Mahad Kisuze Mugaya
Ambassador, International Society of Human Rights, 2025