Women rights organizations have reignited calls for Parliament to consider the controversial Marriage and Divorce Bill.
The bill seeks to prohibit widow inheritance, grants certain rights to cohabiting couples and equalizes prejudiced divorce provisions which granted absolute rights to men. It was designed in part, to improve women's rights in marriages and to reform and consolidate the laws relating to marriage, separation and divorce.
Tabled as the Domestic Relations Bill, in 2003, the draft was rejected by the Muslim community opposed to the provisions banning polygamy. After being rejected by Parliament in 2006, the bill was split into a Muslim Personal Law Bill, which covers Muslim marriages, and the Marriage and Divorce Bill for the other religious denominations.
The drafts were however shelved following wide condemnation from a section of religious leaders and members of the public arguing that the proposals within were alien to the African culture.
Some of the controversial proposals include among others, those that pertain to bride price, a customary practice requiring payment of consideration by a groom to his wife's family. The current Marriage and Divorce Bill states that bride price cannot be treated as a prerequisite for marriage, and makes criminal the act of demanding repayment of bride price.
During a meeting between the Women Democracy Group (WDG) and Uganda Women Parliamentary Association (UWOPA) on Monday, UWOPA chairperson Monica Amoding observed that there are wrong assumptions about the bill, widely seen to be a recipe for divorce in communities.
Amoding says the last consultation on the bill by MPs was majorly biased, which did not give the public right information on the content of the proposed law.
"The last Parliament was unfortunate, it was not what we anticipated when we said 'consultation'. Instead, what happened was not consultation, it was biasing the public because an individual MP who had his own issues or her own issues against the bill based on their individual experiences as a person without caring about the other majority of the people that that they represent. They went out and biased the public with their own experiences and as you know majority of the people listen to their MPs. So generally that kind of conversation is what we want to guard against", Amoding said.
Ritah Aciro, the executive director of Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) noted that the bill only seeks to consolidate the Marriage Act and Divorce Act, which are already in place, contrary to popular belief that it is a divorce-centered bill.
"When people say that we want people to divorce, no, we just want them to ensure that the women in that relationship if and when somebody finds themselves in that situation what are the laws that guard them - both men and women. And, I think as a country, we all know that these challenges are amidst us. We are going to engage [and] we want to thank the 9th Parliament in particular for ensuring that the bill was not shelved and it continues to be on the order paper of the 10th parliament. We learn from processes and we've learnt from the previous processes. Now we have to devise new strategie", Aciro says.
Bukoto East MP Florence Namayanja says with 23 out of 178 clauses already passed by Parliament, it is prudent that legislators scrutinize the bill and weigh its merits against the demerits.
"We discuss them [clauses] and dispose them off. We either maintain them or remove them when everybody has discussed and agreed instead of keeping the bill for all this time while other people think that it is important to have it adopted into law", she said.
In 2013, President Yoweri Museveni urged the MPs not to push for the bill, arguing it would cause a civil war in the country. Among the bills also lined up for scrutiny is Sexual Offenses Bill, which was tabled last year.
Early last year, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga urged Parliament to reconsider the bill more soberly and pass it into law.
Why don't we help the people of this country? Let us finish with this business. It has been around for so long," Kadaga argued.
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