Hon. Justice Katureebe (CJ) with the team from World Bank
The officials from the World Bank paid a courtesy call on the Chief Justice, Hon. Justice Bart M. Katureebe, at his chambers at the High Court.
The officials included Christina Malmberg Calvo, Country Manager, World Bank Uganda, Majorie Mpundu, Senior Counsel Legal Vice Presidency, Africa Practice and Barbra Magyezi, the Senior Public Sector Specialist, World Bank.
The team thanked the Chief Justice for organizing the Women in Leadership Conference saying it was a major step in improving society welfare.
The meeting was a follow up on a similar meeting the Chief Justice had with World Bank officials in the US last year.
Among the intervention areas discussed were access to justice, functional issues such as number of judicial officers, number of High Court circuits and mobile courts.
The team also discussed Sexual and Gender Based Violence and land issues. They equally talked about automation of courts and putting in place a performance management system.
Ms.Mpundu said the World Bank is doing an analysis to come up with the best home-grown ICT option to ease the process of automating courts. She said corruption mapping has been done with donors to establish real from perceived corruption.
The Chief Justice said automation of the courts would help to reduce human contact and do away with opportunistic corruption. He said the process will begin as a pilot project and will also be used to monitor and evaluate performance of judicial officers.
The CJ added that the Performance Enhancement Tool will soon be rolled out. "If the legal adjudicatory system is not cleaned up and strengthened, any economic gains made are bound to be lost."
Ms. Calvo said mapping of corruption indicators will be one of the components of the project.
The meeting was attended by officials from International Justice Mission, Permanent Secretary/Secretary to Judiciary, Mr. Kagole Expedito Kivumbi and Judiciary Advisor on Reforms Mr. Andrew Khaukha.
The officials later paid a courtesy call on the Principal Judge, Hon. Justice Dr. Yorokamu Bamwine.
The World Bank is currently supporting Uganda's Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and working closely with some districts and civil society organisations in Uganda to tackle the SGBV issue.
Posted 14th, March 2018
