There are so many quotes and sayings about how travel will help you learn – about yourself, the world, your country, humanity – that it borders on the cliché. But just because something has been said a lot, doesn’t mean it is any less true. So at the risk of being cliché, I want to talk about one of the most unexpected but enriching learning experiences I had during my time at the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) in Kampala, Uganda.
I was lucky enough to be in the company of several other interns – law students from Makerere University and Uganda Pentecostal University. In the slower moments of the internship we had the chance to chat about everything and nothing – from movies & music to favourite law classes to the best national parks in Uganda. And of course, we spent hours discussing Ugandan (and Canadian) law, going over the minute details about constitutional frameworks, criminal law and court systems in a way that maybe only law students really care about. It was fun and fascinating to engage with people who share some perspectives with me (as young people, as law students) but who also come from a very different culture and society.
We had debates and disagreements about the differences in our respective countries’ legal systems. I could never quite wrap my head around why Ugandan courts distinguished (as a matter of jurisdiction) between enforcing constitutional rights and interpreting them. The first is a matter for the High Court while the latter is dealt with by the Constitutional Court. In contrast, the Ugandan law students I worked with were shocked that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (unlike the Ugandan constitution) does not have a clause leaving open-ended the recognition of new rights that are not specifically enumerated.
Of course, through these conversations I learned more about Uganda, its society and its laws. But I was surprised about how much it taught me about law in general and Canadian law in particular.
For example, I was asked to review a draft bill updating the Sexual Offences Act to highlight health rights issues that could arise under the new law. Having little knowledge about the history of Ugandan sexual offences or even Ugandan criminal law, I was constantly asking the other law students questions as I worked. This eventually led to a prolonged discussion about the legal framework around sexual assault in Uganda. Despite both Uganda and Canada initially developing their criminal statutes from English criminal law, their approaches differ quite significantly. Canada has one broad, general offence that is meant to capture a range of situations. Uganda, on the other hand, distinguishes between a variety of separate, more specific offences.
As the conversation continued and we delved deeper into reasoning behind the Ugandan approach, I realised how their approach was developed to respond to the challenges of their particular social context and how their legal system was organised. Reflecting on Canada’s approach, designed and tailored to a different society, I realised it might not work in practice in Uganda.
Conversations like these helped me better appreciate how law must be layered onto a particular society. It opened my eyes to thinking about law differently – not just how law is shaped by society, but how easy it is for this process to become invisible or obscured. What is necessary for a law in one’s own country to be effective seems to be a necessaryfeature of law in general. This changed the way I think about what law needs to be and has interested me in the complexity of how best to convert universal human rights principles into local laws.
Among all the amazing things I had the chance to experience in my internship, I was surprised at how often I revisited these conversations and how much they shaped my thinking. These conversations have given me the chance to talk through different legal question with people who have very different legal perspectives. And sometimes just striking up a conversation can lead to the most unexpected and fascinating insights.
