Kampala 13^th October, 2022; Today we officiated the two day Inaugural Unwanted Witness Inter-University Privacy Moot Court Competition happening at Makerere University-Uganda.

The Moot Competition is part of our long advocacy for safe digital spaces that thrive on a robust legal framework and compliance. In 2019, Uganda Passed The Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 to regulate the collection and processing of data, restricting the illicit utilisation or mishandling of personal information by creating a legal environment of fairness, security, accuracy, and accountability in dealing with data.

This means that in the immediate future, organizations will need ‘privacy professionals’ to ensure compliance with these regulations. This opens new roles for budding legal professionals such as data protection officers, chief privacy officers, privacy lawyers, or those working with the regulatory bodies or government authorities to carry out data protection implementation, advisory, and audits.

The inter-university privacy moot court competition is not just a competition but a learning platform to prepare young professionals for the emerging roles in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

To that end, Unwanted Witness is holding its inaugural moot Court Competition on Privacy in a bid to train young legal professionals with expert knowledge of data protection laws, policies and regulations and to further develop their oral, written, analytical, logical, and legal technological skills necessary for this growing sector.

The Mock/moot question centers on the daily privacy concerns related to the interaction with several technological solutions. The Moot problem is designed in such a way that it helps the budding “legal professionals” to solve daily privacy challenges faced by everyone that interacts with technological tools in the transport and financial sector. We believe by the end of the competition, the participants will have hands-on experience and skills in solving privacy concerns in our daily lives and will be prepared to position themselves as Data and Privacy officers among others.

Whereas, the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 is an untested law in the courts of Uganda, we believe that the distinguished Honorable Justices that will adjudicate the finals, will as well have a very first taste of this law. 

We call upon the general public to follow the event happening between today and tomorrow.

About The Unwanted Witness

The Unwanted Witness, Uganda is a civil society organization (CSO) that was established to respond to the gap in effective communication using various online expression platforms