- Where? Golf Course Hotel, Kampala
- When? 19th of September 2025
After four years of dedicated work to bridge the justice gap for women and girls in Uganda, Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) and its partners are proud to host a National Conference on Women’s Access to Justice. The event will bring together state and non-state actors to reflect on progress, share lessons learned, and chart a sustainable path forward for women’s legal empowerment.
The conference, to be held in Kampala under the theme “Strengthening ecosystems that sustain women’s legal empowerment in an environment that serves their needs”, marks the culmination of the From Access to Equality (FATE) project – a four-year initiative funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and implemented in partnership with Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET), Penal Reform International (PRI), and BarefootLaw (BFL).
Closing the Justice Gap for Women
The FATE project Theory of Change rests on a simple but powerful idea: if women have greater access to information, if communities adopt more positive attitudes towards women’s and girls’ rights, if legal aid and protection services can effectively respond to their justice needs, and if institutions are held accountable for upholding these rights—then the groundwork will be laid for decision-makers to mobilize and make these rights a lived reality.
Guided by this vision, the consortium partners have, over the past four years, implemented a wide range of strategies and innovations to advance women’s legal empowerment in environments that truly serve their needs. These efforts have included supporting women’s economic empowerment through mini-grants and start-up kits as a springboard to legal empowerment, providing shelters and protection services for survivors of gender-based violence, offering legal aid alongside psychosocial and psychiatric support to women offenders in prison, and leveraging digital platforms to expand access to legal information and to the services of lawyers.
Conference Objectives
The National Conference provides a unique opportunity to:
- Reflect on achievements and lessons learned from the FATE project.
- Share innovative approaches to promoting women’s legal empowerment.
- Discuss strategies to sustain and scale results beyond the project’s lifespan.
- Assess whether current laws, policies, and institutions are adequately addressing women’s justice needs.
Who Will Attend
The conference will bring together:
- Development partners.
- Government representatives, including the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, the Security and Governance Program (formerly JLOS), Uganda Police, and Uganda Prison Services.
- The Judiciary, Uganda Human Rights Commission, civil society organizations, district representatives, and beneficiaries of the project.
