Analysing Women's Rights in the Context of Sustainable Development under the Maputo Protocol: A Case Study of Uganda

The rights of women and the pursuit of sustainable development are closely connected: the equality and empowerment of women is at once an end in itself and a condition of the economic, social and environmental objectives of development. The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Maputo Protocol, which Uganda ratified in 2010, is the first human-rights instrument to articulate, in binding regional form, a right of women to sustainable development, together with rights to a healthy environment, to food security and to equitable access to and control of productive resources. This article analyses women's rights in the context of sustainable development under the Maputo Protocol, with Uganda as a case study. It sets out the concept of women's rights and of sustainable development and the link between them; it examines the international, constitutional and statutory framework, comprising the Maputo Protocol, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the 2030 Agenda, the Constitution of Uganda and the principal statutes affecting women, the Succession Act Cap 268, the Divorce Act Cap 144, the Land Act Cap 236, the Employment Act Cap 226 and the Domestic Violence Act Cap 123; and it analyses the Ugandan jurisprudence, including Mifumi v Attorney General, Uganda Association of Women Lawyers v Attorney General, Law and Advocacy for Women in Uganda v Attorney General and Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development v Attorney General. It argues that Uganda possesses a robust legal framework for the rights of women in the context of sustainable development, but that the realisation of those rights is constrained by discriminatory customary practices, by weak enforcement and by the incomplete implementation of the developmental dimension of women's rights, and it recommends the full domestication and implementation of the Maputo Protocol, the strengthening of enforcement, the improvement of access to justice, and sustained action against harmful practices.