The case for legal and policy reforms for children born of wartime sexual violence in Northern Uganda

Abstract

This study interrogates the case for legal and policy interventions to protect children born of wartime sexual violence (CBWSV) in Northern Uganda – a population whose distinct legal vulnerabilities remain inadequately addressed by Uganda's existing normative frameworks. Arising from systematic sexual violence committed by the Lord's Resistance Army during a conflict spanning approximately 1986 to 2006, these children simultaneously enjoy constitutional and treaty protection in principle and face systematic exclusion from birth registration, inheritance, land, and transitional justice in practice. Employing a mixed-methods socio-legal methodology, the study combines doctrinal analysis of Uganda's constitutional and statutory framework with empirical findings drawn from key informant interviews and focus group discussions conducted with affected adults, community leaders, and institutional actors in Northern Uganda. Empirical data are interpreted through legal rather than social-scientific frameworks, situating interview evidence within the Children Act Cap 62, the Registration of Persons Act Cap 332, the Succession Act Cap 268, the Land Act Cap 236, and relevant international instruments including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The analysis is anchored in an integrated theoretical framework of Justice Theory, Children's Rights Theory, and Transitional Justice Theory. The study advances five arguments. First, Uganda's legal framework contains structural gaps operating to the particular detriment of CBWSV, including proof-of-paternity requirements that render birth registration inaccessible. Second, the National Transitional Justice Policy 2019 does not provide enforceable reparative mechanisms specifically addressing CBWSV's legal deficits. Third, Uganda v Thomas Kwoyelo (2023) represents a landmark accountability precedent that nonetheless excludes CBWSV from reparations, exposing the gap between criminal accountability and victim redress for indirect victims. Fourth, comparative experience from Rwanda, Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Bosnia-Herzegovina demonstrates that targeted legislative reform is feasible and effective, and that inaction produces the durable legal invisibility Uganda currently maintains. Fifth, CBWSV's exclusion constitutes not merely a policy failure but a present violation of binding constitutional and international obligations. The study provides ten targeted recommendations for statutory reform, institutional capacitybuilding, and administrative action, grounded in the proposition that the protection of CBWSV is a present constitutional obligation whose discharge requires specific legislative amendments and the activation of enforcement mechanisms Uganda has thus far failed to deploy.