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Justice in Uganda 2024

The data on this page comes from a Justice Needs and Satisfacton survey conducted by HiiL in Uganda in 2023. We interviewed over 6 000 randomly selected adults across the country in 2023. In 2024, we launched a report that gives a voice to the justice needs and experiences of millions of Ugandans.

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Experienced
legal problems

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Took action to
resolve their problem

0 %

Completely or partially
resolved their problem

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Number of people
interviewed in Uganda

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Photo by BOULENGER Xavier

Below you will find the story of justice problems in everyday life of the people in Uganda. They told us how the problems affect them, what they do to resolve them and how they experienced the formal and informal justice system.

This is the justice story as the people in Uganda encounter and feels it.

95% of the people in Uganda faced one or more legal problems in the last four years.
About 25.78 million people experience legal problems every four years.
Land and neighbour problems are the most common legal problems.
Legal problems generally have a high impact on the life of people in Uganda.
About 93% of the people with problems take action to try to resolve their most serious problem.
Of the people who experienced a serious justice problem, 38% were able to completely resolve their problem.
Legal problems that have a high impact are likely to be ongoing.
Family members and courts are the most commonly used sources of help in Uganda.

How people experience justice in Uganda

Have you encountered one or more legal problems?

A legal problem is a problem that takes place in daily life – a dispute, disagreement or grievance for which there is a resolution in the (formal or informal) law. It does not matter if the individual sees it as legal or whether she took action to resolve it.

The chart shows how many adults in Uganda encountered one or more legal problems in the last 4 years.

What is the demand for justice in Uganda?

Every 4 years, over 25 million people deal with legal problems. Some of them encounter multiple problems. On an annual basis, this amounts to 8.59 million people who need protection from the law to resolve a legal problem.

A gap this big means that for every 100,000 people there are 31,825 individuals who must cope with one or more legal problems.

Which are the most frequent legal problems of people?

Problems related to land and neighbours are the biggest justice problem in Uganda. Of all people who had to deal with a legal problem, 42% have encountered a land and neighbour related problem. 39% experienced crime and 37% experienced a dispute related to familiy.

Which are the six most frequent legal problems experienced by people in a year (in numbers)?

Problems related to land, neighbours, crime, family, domestic violence and debt are justice problems that people are most likely to encounter in a year.

We derived the total number of problems people that are likely to experience in a given year for each justice problem by taking findings from the randomly selected sample and projecting them to the general population. In other words, we extrapolate the proportion of people who experienced a justice problem to the general population. So this graph reflects the prevalence of justice problems among the general population of Uganda.

Which are the most serious justice problems?

We asked people to tell us about the legal problem which they assess as most serious.

The problems are grouped into categories. For instance, crime aggregates experiences with property and violent crime, fraud and so on.

Which are the most burdensome legal problems?

Which problems should be addressed first? The justice gap is enormous and policy-makers and service providers must focus resources on the most burdensome legal problems.

To calculate the burden of a legal problem, we combined the impact and prevalence (frequency) of the problem. Legal problems that are both frequent and impactful have high burden scores. Impact and prevalence vary across key socio-demographic variables. Therefore in the chart, we let the users play and make their selections to see what are the most burdensome problems for specific groups.

Did you take action to resolve the problem?

When there is a legal problem, a well functioning legal system provides one or more dispute resolution mechanisms. We call the chains of these dispute resolution mechanisms justice journeys.

The concept of a justice journey recognizes that there are many different steps to resolve a problem. Most often these steps are not linear. The entirety of the steps that people take to resolve a problem is a justice journey.

Which are the paths to justice that people rely on?

The path to justice for people in Uganda consists of more than one justice provider. In other words, people rely on a combination of justice providers to resolve their justice problems. This chart shows the proportion of Ugandans who rely on various justice providers.

The chart also indicates where there is scope to integrate better processes or services. For example, since a lot of people rely on informal sources of help to resolve justice problems, great processes at that level could be a gamechanger.

How many people rely on the most commonly used providers of justice?

The above chart depicts the percentage of people who rely on each of the various providers of justice. In this chart, we estimate the total number of people who rely on the four most commonly used providers of justice.

Do the most serious legal problems reach resolutions in Uganda?

The number of legal problems tells us about the size of the demand for justice but it is not enough to measure the total justice gap. To measure the justice gap, it is also important to understand whether these problems are converted into fair resolutions that help people to continue with their lives.

Of the most serious justice problems experiences by Ugandans every year, 2.7 million problems are fully resolved. 3.7 million are in a process of resolution and 1.1 million are not resolved at all.

Justice Dashboard

Justice Dashboard

Justice in Uganda 2024

Read more about the justice needs of people in Uganda, here

How people experience justice in Uganda

Have you encountered one or more legal problems?

What is the demand for justice in Uganda?

Which are the most frequent legal problems of people?

Which are the six most frequent legal problems experienced by people in a year (in numbers)?

Which are the most serious justice problems?

Which are the most burdensome legal problems?

Did you take action to resolve the problem?

Which are the paths to justice that people rely on?

How many people rely on the most commonly used providers of justice?

Do the most serious legal problems reach resolutions in Uganda?

Justice Dashboard

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