ARUA CITY COUNCIL ENACTS SGBV ORDINANCE 2024

Arua city councilors and gallery members during the SGBV Ordinance approval

By Onzoma Albert

Arua City

The Arua City Council, with support from the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, enacted the Arua City Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) Ordinance 2024.

The ordinance aims to strengthen local authority and structures, enabling more effective action against perpetrators of SGBV.

It also equips institutions and responsible parties to prevent, manage and respond to SGBV incidents, addressing gaps in national laws by providing localized penalties and survivor support systems.

Hon Yako Teddy Gloria, the Speaker Arua City Council, urged neighboring local governments in the West Nile sub-region to adopt similar measures to combat sexual and gender-based violence.

“We now have the ordnance in place. I therefore want to appeal to the neighboring local governments in West Nile region to borrow a leave from us and have a copy of their own and even media should have a copy so that when they are trying to popularize the law they should be able to read the content in the ordnance because we know that they have the language to speak to the public” she said.

Sheik Habib Aluma, Regional Secretary of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council for West Nile and a member of the eight-person committee that developed the ordinance, emphasized preventing the misuse of women empowerment initiatives designed to protect women and girls.

“I am a proud supporter of all interventions that supports women. In doing so, we must also give them their rights and freedom as they deserve and caution them against excessive misuse of those empowerments because they may easily abuse the empowerments themselves” Sheikh Aluma stressed.

The ordinance targets various forms of violence, including domestic abuse, child marriage, and physical assault.

It was developed following concerns over rising cases of SGBV in the City, where 418 incidents were reported in 2023 alone.

SSP Josephine Angucia, Police Public Relations Officer for West Nile, encouraged both women and men to report SGBV issues within the community openly.

“We really want to encourage women and girls to come up and open freely to us especially when they are facing challenges they should not keep quiet they should always come freely to our offices and report so that we can be able to help them. If it means summoning the perpetrators to our office or counseling them, we shall do it and if it is beyond that then we shall take up other appropriate measures as police” she said.

After being passed in 2024, the ordinance was submitted to the Ministry of Local Government’s Legal Department for certification, followed by the Attorney General’s review, and finally signed by the Mayor of Arua City before publication in the Uganda Gazette for implementation.

The ordinance complements national laws like the Domestic Violence Act (2010) by strengthening local enforcement mechanisms.