Lydia Mugambe, a Ugandan national and former judge of both the Ugandan High Court and the United Nations, has been sentenced to six years in prison by a UK court after being found guilty of modern slavery offences.
The ruling was delivered on Friday, May 2, 2025.
In March, Mugambe was convicted on four counts, including conspiracy to facilitate a breach of UK immigration law, facilitating travel with the intent to exploit, and offences under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act.
She was accused of conspiring with John Leonard Mugerwa then Uganda’s deputy high commissioner to the UK to bring a young Ugandan woman into the country under false pretenses by misrepresenting her visa application.
Although Mugambe initially had diplomatic immunity through her role at the United Nations, it was later waived, allowing the UK authorities to proceed with prosecution.
Throughout the trial, Mugambe denied the charges and maintained that she had not exploited the victim.
She claimed she treated the woman with kindness and never forced her to perform domestic labor.
However, evidence presented in court showed that after promising the victim legitimate employment, Mugambe subjected her to emotional abuse, withheld her personal documents, and failed to fulfill the employment terms.
Mugambe holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Makerere University in Uganda and two Master of Laws degrees one from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and another from Lund University in Sweden, earned in 2004.
She was admitted to the Ugandan Bar in 1998 and was pursuing a doctoral degree in law at the University of Oxford at the time of her conviction.
Her judicial career spans over two decades. She served as a High Court judge in Uganda from 2013 and worked with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in various legal roles between 2005 and 2013.
In 2023, she was appointed as a judge at the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which oversees legacy cases from the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Mugambe is also an active member of multiple legal and human rights organizations, including the International Association of Women Judges, the Uganda Women Judges’ Association, the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association, and the Oxford Human Rights Hub.
She has authored and presented numerous works on human rights and children’s rights.
Her sentencing marks a dramatic fall from grace for a jurist once considered a champion of justice and human rights in East Africa and beyond.
US Acting Ambassador To Kenya Condemns Intimidation Of Journalists
