Happy Birthday Auma.

On your birthday you wore a branded T-shirt educating about a project I assume so impacted your life.

“From Access to Equality (FATE): Empowering Women to Access Justice in Uganda (2021-2025)”

I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. I looked FATE up online and was thrilled with what I found out about it.

FATE, a Dutch funded project and implemented in consortium by Avocats Sans Frontiers (ASF), UWONET, Barefoot Law, and Penal Reform International, positively impacted the lives of survivors such as you.

Auma, you are widowed at an early age and have faced significant injustice. I do not know yet your full story, Auma. I am assuming through FATE you benefited similarly as Mukabire.

Auma at the CPAR Uganda Dr. Paul Hargrave Memorial Centre in Lira City. In session, Training of Self-Reliant Participatory Development Change Agents in Income Generation, under the Dr. Paul Hargrave Memorial Centre Human Development Project jointly implemented by CPAR Uganda and Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief.

Yes, one of the resources that educated me about FATE is an impact video in which the case of Mukabire is shared:

She lost her husband in 2007. After about two to three years, her late husband’s male relative constructively dispossessed her of her family land.  She cried out to the Clan Leader, who in his wisdom confirmed that the Clan Constitution provides that a widow retains possession of and use-rights of family land after the death of her husband. The basis on which the Clan Leader wrote her a support letter referring her to the Community Development Officer (CDO). The CDO in turn similarly wrote her a referral to UWONET. UWONET took on her case and successfully restored her constructive possession of her family land on which she continues to farm and raise her children.

In keeping with the International Women’s Day Theme 2026, “Give To Gain,” I give credit to the FATE implementing consortium.

Thank you for your service to womankind.

We need more success stories such as of Mukabire.

Precedents which demonstrate how legal rights on paper are translated to justice in practice.

For many women, I included, our legal rights on paper remain meaningless for they rarely translate into access to justice; or at best access to justice is an uphill battle.

CLICK HERE to learn more about by on-going experience of how legal rights on paper can be meaningless…”

By the way, failure of women to access justice is sadly also perpetuated by women in position to do otherwise.

A female Commandant of the Police Professional Standards Unit, who provides protection for a Regional Police Commander (male),

A Regional Police Commander who in collusion with a Regional CID (female) sides with the criminal (male).

A Regional CID (female) who in collusion with a District CID (male) enables a criminal to engage in significant gender-based violence and land grabbing.

They, individual officers of the Police Force, brazenly undermine the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution, of which the Resident State Attorney (RSA) is female.

The RSA does her very best, but the issue is with individual officers within the Police Force … You catch my drift.

I digress, back to the point, on this Women’s Day 2026, I am reflecting on one of the themed focus areas.

“Legal rights on paper are meaningless without justice in practice.”

May we find the wisdom and the courage to do justice in practice.

Happy Women’s Day 2026!