Group Photo: Pariticipants at the SGBV Phase VI Session Review Meeting
The Principal Judge, Dr Flavian Zeija, has called upon Judicial Officers to take charge of their courts well so as to solve challenges associated with reduction of conviction rates in cases of Sexual and Gender Based Violence(SGBV).
The Principal Judge made the remarks today at Mestil Hotel and Residences while officiating at the SGBV Phase VI Session Review Meeting.
He said following the presentation by the Governance and Security Programme Senior Technical Advisor, Ms Rachael Odoi, it was established that there was a reduction in the conviction rates of SGBV cases from 74 percent to64 per cent.
However, Dr Zeija said these reductions are based on the Judicial Officers presiding over the matters. He gave an example that in 2018, they had a successful session in Bushenyi where 99 per cent of witnesses turned up.
Narrating how he was able to achieve this, Dr Zeija said that he would not listen to stories of Court Process Servers who said they had failed to get witnesses.
The Principal Judge said he worked closely with the Police and any witness that refused to come would be arrested for contempt of court, compelled to testify and afterwards cautioned never to do it again.
He said he would also ask the Process Servers to show evidence in form of a stamp from the Local Council One showing that a certain witness couldn't be traced. He said sometimes Court Process Servers don't take the documents to where they are supposed to be, adding that he even invested his personal resources to make sure witnesses turn up.
According to the Principal Judge, those witnesses who didn't turn would be contacted and some said that they were very far and because of work issues, they are the ones who would be exempted, given the budgetary constraints also.
He said the SGBV sessions continue being affected by lack of shelters for SGBV victims, and here he gave an example of a young girl who was defiled by her father and continued staying with him. On this, Zeija said he took the girl to his chambers and asked her the truth which helped him to get information that he relied on to jail the father, so as to safeguard the girl from further abuse.
He has also highlighted weak data management systems, lack of video learning and virtual materials to conduct the session and limited resources as one of the challenges . He believes that the Certificate of Financial Implications is one of the problems there isn't a witness protection law.
He is hopeful that the meeting will address some of the challenges and how to optimally design the project and its implementation for a better phase VII.
"It is important to evaluate the past session. If you can't measure, you can't manage. Evaluation is very critical in management of programmes," said Dr Zeija.
He said the evaluation will help them in identifying areas of improvement hence effectiveness and efficiency, because it's through evaluation that funders know whether to continue or not.
He thus called for impact management with a meaningful outcome with figures and statistics that tell stories.
Posted 24th, June 2024
