Broken Ugandan Judicial System: 13 year-old girl abducted, raped, jailed and forced to marry her attacker!
Key Words: Uganda Law Society (ULS), Uganda Penal Code, Rape, Defilement, Age of consent, Patriarchy, Gender Equality, Child Rights, Rape Victims, Gender Discrination, Sex Offences . A forthnight ago, we wrote about the Uganda Law Society (ULS) lending its professional weight to a law that would criminalise abducted children as young as 15 years old forced into child-soldiering by the Lord's Resistance Army. Our ire was raised by the fact that ULS knows these children are victims of the state that failed to protect them and the insurgents that abducted, trained and deployed them to commit despicable acts. In discussing the issue, we thought that it was ridiculous, because the ULS knows very well it is a war crime to recruit, coerce and deploy anyone younger than 18 into armed conflict. How could they be talking of children as young as 15, being responsible first, for being abducted by the insurgents; and second for being trained and deployed to commit war crimes and crimes agains...