The increasing number of young people in Uganda has come up with challenges that need a multi-pronged approach by all the stakeholders.

On one hand, there exists huge potential of investing in young lawyers to help the country unlock several opportunities. On the other hand, recent developments demonstrate that if the challenges the young population faces such as unemployment and insufficient provision of adequate social amenities are not attended to and addressed, we will see rising levels of dependency among the youth with a result that the country is likely to witness rising conflicts across the local economic and political spectrum.

It is against this background that the Uganda Law Society and the Centre for Public Interest Law designed a leadership development programme for young lawyers with the aim of equipping them and empowering them with leadership skills tailored towards creating a society that respects the Rule of Law. It is expected that leaders in different sectors and platforms are in a position to provide leadership and mentorship that will guide the youth towards reasoning the complex challenges affecting Uganda’s culture on Rule of Law framework to avoid a situation where Uganda makes a complete reverse to the pre-1995 Constitution captured in the Preamble.

The culture of the rule of law needs a long-term approach and one of the best ways to do this is if we are to learn from the History of Uganda as captured in the preamble to the Constitution by deliberately investing in young people.

CEPIL launched the Rule of Law Champions Initiative that seeks to empower and mentor young people to be the champions of the Rule of Law.