The Sovereignty Bill That Could Undermine Uganda's Sovereignty

The Protection of Sovereignty Bill No. 13 of 2026 is dressed in the language of national pride. But read the fine print and you will find ghost laws the country already repealed, treaty obligations shredded from the inside, and criminal penalties that would make a foreign investor's lawyer weep. Here is everything you need to know and why it matters.

Let me be upfront about something, Sovereignty is not a dirty word. Every country has the right to protect its national interest, regulate foreign actors on its soil, and decide who gets to do what within its borders. Therefore, Uganda is no different.

But here is the thing about legal drafting, intention and effect are not always the same. And when you read Bill No. 13 of 2026, the Protection of Sovereignty Bill, carefully, what you find is a piece of legislation that could produce a boomerang effect.

A law designed to shield Uganda from foreign interference that may instead expose Uganda to international legal liability, investor flight, aid withdrawal, and the uncomfortable charge of resurrecting laws it already had the courage to repeal.

Let me walk you through this bill section by section, conversationally, without the legalese fog, and tell you exactly where the controversies lie, why they matter, and what needs to change.

First Things First, What Is This Bill Actually Trying to Do?

The Bill creates a registration and oversight regime for what it calls "agents of foreigners" Ugandans or entities in Uganda that act on behalf of, or receive funding from, foreign governments, institutions, or individuals. It requires registration, sets funding limits, mandates reporting, and criminalises a range of activities from receiving unauthorised foreign money to "engaging in disruptive activities."

On the surface, this sounds like the kind of foreign influence transparency law that many countries have. The United States has FARA the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Several European countries operate similar regimes. The instinct, in isolation, is legitimate.

But do not be fooled by the title or the intent. In law, good intentions do not draft themselves into good legislation and the gap between what a bill is meant to do and what it actually does in practice is precisely why Uganda has a Constitutional Court.

That Court exists not to obstruct Parliament, but to hold it accountable when the drafting strays beyond what the Constitution permits. As we will show, this bill gives the Court plenty of work to do.

The devil, as always, is in the drafting. And this particular devil is in familiar territory.

The Repeal Problem and Retrospective Legislation

Uganda has a history of retrospective legislative practices that raise serious constitutional concerns. Article 92 of the Constitution is explicit;

Parliament shall not pass any law to alter the decision or judgment of any court as between the parties to that decision or judgment.

Despite this, a discernible legislative pattern has emerged, provisions previously struck down as unconstitutional are reintroduced in slightly altered form under new titles. This is not merely a political concern; it is a constitutional one, and the courts have said so explicitly.

A recent illustration is Parliament passed the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (Amendment) Act, 2025, enacted approximately 109 days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Attorney General v. Michael Kabaziguruka (Constitutional Appeal No. 2 of 2021), delivered on 31 January 2025. The timing and substance raised immediate concerns about legislative disregard for judicial pronouncements, and a broader tension with constitutional limits on Parliament’s law-making power.

This is not an isolated instance. The Constitutional Court has repeatedly warned against this practice. If enacted, the Protection of Sovereignty Bill, 2026, risks becoming the latest example, and a likely candidate for constitutional challenge.

We have been here before with the POMA 2013 Precedent

The Public Order Management Act, 2013 (POMA) was framed in the language of public order; it granted police sweeping powers to regulate, disperse, and effectively prohibit public gatherings. In practice, it was used to restrict political opposition and suppress dissent.

In Human Rights Network Uganda & 4 Others v. Attorney General (Constitutional Petition No. 56 of 2013), the Constitutional Court held, by a four-to-one majority, that POMA was inconsistent with the 1995 Constitution. The lead judgment by Hon. Justice Cheborion Barishaki was unequivocal;

“It is only in undemocratic and authoritarian regimes that peaceful protests and public gatherings of a political nature are not tolerated.”

The Court found that POMA failed the test under Article 43(2)(c) of the Constitution, which requires that any limitation on rights be acceptable and demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. It further clarified that the police cannot rely on anticipated breaches of peace to prohibit gatherings; Peaceful assemblies do not require prior police permission; The role of police is to facilitate, not suppress, lawful assemblies.

Justice Barishaki On Parliament's Contempt for Constitutional Rulings stated that

"It is a pity that their explanations in nullifying section 32(2) of the Police Act were contemptuously ignored by Parliament and the Executive... It therefore defies logic as to why Parliament would rush to pass an Act of Parliament containing provisions that are pari materia with those that were declared unconstitutional in Muwanga Kivumbi v Attorney General (Constitutional Petition No. 9 of 2005) [2008] UGCC 34.”."

Justice Kenneth Kakuru went further, finding that the POMA contained provisions so "irrational and vague" that an ordinary person could not understand what conduct it forbade and that in practice, it had been used selectively to criminalise political opposition while government-sanctioned gatherings were left entirely alone

Suffice to say that "pari materia" means "on the same subject matter." The Court was telling Parliament directly; you are recycling laws we already struck down.

Read that again. "Contemptuously ignored." "Defies logic." These are the words of a Constitutional Court judge describing Parliament's behaviour when it repackages struck-down laws. And yet here we are in 2026, with the Protection of Sovereignty Bill doing precisely what the POMA did, taking previously invalidated legal mechanisms, giving them new clothing, and sending them back through the chamber...or what the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (Amendment) Act, 2025 just did.

The ghost is not a metaphor. It is a documented, judicially condemned pattern. And the Court has made clear it will keep striking the legislation down for as long as Parliament keeps sending it back.

The Controversies in the Bill

Section 22 on Economic Sabotage as stipulated in the Protection of Sovereignty Bill 2026

Section 22(1) provides that;

“A person or an agent of foreigner shall not directly or indirectly obtain, solicit or receive any financial support, donation, loan or other assistance from a foreigner... in excess of twenty thousand currency points, within a period of twelve months without the written approval of the Minister.”

That is UGX 400 million, approximately USD 108,000 at current rates. Any single foreign-linked transaction above that threshold requires ministerial approval.

The penalty for non-compliance is severe; up to 20 years’ imprisonment for an individual. This is not a compliance penalty; it is punitive.

Section 23 goes further, criminalising obtaining funds from any foreign source “which or who has demonstrated an intention to overthrow the established Government.” The determination of what constitutes such intention is left to the Minister, who also controls registration, approvals, regulations, and inspections. This concentration of discretion in a single office creates a framework capable of being weaponised.

This effectively means that any individual or entity with a transaction exceeding UGX 400 million would require ministerial approval. In practice, this raises serious administrative and practical concerns.

In Uganda, processes requiring ministerial consent, whether for transactions involving land under trusteeship or approvals relating to NGO operations, are often prolonged by bureaucratic maneuvering. Therefore, extending such approval requirements to routine financial transactions exceeding this threshold risks creating inefficiency and uncertainty. It might, in the most precise terms, open a floodgate of Corruption.

The penalty for getting it wrong? Up to 20 years imprisonment for an individual. That is not a compliance penalty. That is a weapon. Section 23 goes further still, criminalising obtaining funds from any foreign source that "has demonstrated an intention to overthrow the established Government." Who decides what constitutes demonstrated intention? The Minister. The same Minister who controls the registration, the approvals, the regulations, and the inspections. That concentration of discretion in one office is the definition of a law designed to be weaponised.

Section 7 and Section 13 Free Speech, Cornered From Two Directions

The Constitutional Court has, in several cases, struck down Penal Code provisions that criminalised "promoting the interests of a foreigner." Those provisions were rightly condemned as overly broad, susceptible to abuse, and incompatible with Article 29 of the Constitution. The Bill revives the same logic simultaneously through two different sections, Section 7 targeting the political dimension, and Section 13 targeting the economic one.

Section 7 prohibits engaging in activities that "promote the interests of a foreigner against the interests of Uganda." That phrase "against the interests of Uganda" is undefined. Its interpretation is left entirely to the Minister.

Section 13 prohibits publishing information or participating in any activity that "weakens or damages the economic system or viability of the country." That phrase, "economic viability" is equally undefined. And equally left to prosecutorial discretion.

Together, Sections 7 and 13 create a pincer movement around free expression. Political speech gets caught in one; economic commentary gets caught in the other. The writer, the journalist, the academic, the activist, all face criminal liability on two fronts simultaneously.

Consider who this actually catches.

A human rights lawyer briefing a UN Special Rapporteur on conditions in Uganda, A journalist sharing footage with an international media house that is embarrassing to the government, a financial analyst publishing a report for a foreign investment firm on Uganda's fiscal challenges, an economist presenting research at a foreign university on the cost of corruption, an NGO worker publishing data on health system failures to international donors, potentially both.

And here is the question that demands a frank answer, what is the legislative intention of this bill, if not to expose Uganda as a pariah state? A law that criminalises the journalist, the economist, the researcher, and the human rights defender, while leaving the corrupt official, the inefficient bureaucrat, and the extractive institution untouched, is not a sovereignty protection measure. It is the architecture of a closed society.

The Constitutional Court Has Already Drawn This Line. Why Is Parliament Crossing It Again?

This is the part of the Sovereignty Bill conversation that is not getting enough attention. This is not a debate about untested legal principles. Uganda's Constitutional Court has already, in multiple landmark decisions, struck down, neutered, or sharply curtailed the exact kinds of provisions this bill is attempting to revive. Each ruling was hard-won. Each one cost somebody their freedom, their career, or years of litigation. And each one is binding precedent.

Let me walk you through them.

Andrew Mwenda & Another v. Attorney General

The sedition provisions of Uganda's Penal Code were the government's favourite tool for silencing inconvenient journalists and critics. Speak critically of the President? Sedition. Publish an editorial that embarrassed a minister? Sedition. The offence was so elastic it could stretch to cover almost any political commentary the authorities found uncomfortable.

The Constitutional Court killed it. In Andrew Mwenda & Another v. Attorney General, the Court held that the sedition law violated Article 29 of the Constitution, the right to freedom of expression, and struck it down as unconstitutional. The ruling was unambiguous; the state does not get to criminalise speech simply because it is critical, offensive, or politically inconvenient. If you are offended by what someone says, the Court made clear, your remedy is civil, not criminal prosecution.

Article 29 of the Constitution of Uganda guarantees freedom of speech and expression. Criminal sanctions for speech that falls short of direct incitement to violence cannot be justified in a democratic society. Those aggrieved by expression have civil remedies available to them.

Paraphrased from the Constitutional Court's holding, the principle that any person offended by speech should pursue civil remedies, not criminal prosecution, is binding law in Uganda.

That ruling did not just abolish sedition. It established a constitutional principle that free speech is presumptively free. Criminal penalties for expression are presumptively unconstitutional. The burden falls on the state to justify any restriction, and "we found it offensive" or "it embarrassed the government" does not meet that burden.

Why the obsession with the criminalization of free speech?

Charles Onyango Obbo & Another v. Attorney General

If the Mwenda case ended sedition, Charles Onyango Obbo & Another v. Attorney General drove the stake through criminal libel. Onyango Obbo, one of Uganda's most distinguished journalists, was prosecuted for publishing a story the government did not like. The Constitutional Court was asked whether criminal libel, making it a criminal offence to publish material that "defames" a person, could survive constitutional scrutiny under Article 29.

It could not. The Court held that criminal libel was a disproportionate restriction on free expression. Once again, the message was unambiguous; public figures, including government officials and institutions, who feel defamed by published material have civil courts available to them. They do not get to reach for the criminal law and the power of imprisonment to silence critics.

Together, Mwenda and Onyango Obbo created a constitutional architecture for free expression in Uganda that was genuinely progressive, one that recognised journalism, activism, and public commentary as protected activity, not threats to be prosecuted.

Alternative Digitalk Ltd & 24 Others v. Attorney General

Then came the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022 a law that many observers regarded as the digital-age successor to sedition. Its provisions were used against TikTokers, Twitter commentators, journalists, and activists. The offences were vague. The chilling effect was immediate and severe. Ordinary Ugandans began self-censoring online in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier.

In Alternative Digitalk Ltd & 24 Others v. Attorney General, Consolidated Constitutional Petitions Nos. 34, 37 & 42 of 2022, the Constitutional Court struck back. And it did so on two distinct grounds that are both directly relevant to the Sovereignty Bill.

First, on substance, the Court reaffirmed that provisions criminalising online expression, particularly those with vague, broad definitions capable of catching legitimate political commentary, violated Article 29. The Computer Misuse Act's offensive communication and false news provisions were held unconstitutional. The Court was explicit; the digital public square deserves the same constitutional protection as any other forum for expression.

Second, on process, the Court made a ruling that Parliament needs to hear loud and clear before passing the Sovereignty Bill. Quorum in Parliament is not a bureaucratic technicality. It is a constitutional requirement under Articles 88 and 89 of the Constitution. Laws enacted without adequate quorum are constitutionally infirm. The Alternative Digitalk ruling confirmed that this is a live, enforceable ground of challenge, not a procedural nicety to be waived in the rush to pass legislation.

In the lead Judgement of Mulyagonja JCC/JCCA;

Quorum is not a mere procedural technicality; it is a constitutional safeguard that ensures laws are enacted with adequate representation, deliberation, and legitimacy. Articles 88 and 89 of the Constitution impose a mandatory requirement that Parliament cannot circumvent by convenience or political expediency.

The Court's reaffirmation of quorum as a substantive constitutional requirement, directly relevant to how the Sovereignty Bill is being processed through Parliament...the haste, because as a matter of fact, the current term of the 11th Parliament expires in May, to pave the way for the 12th Parliament, and legally any pending bills cannot pass...so this haste is going to make this law go to waste like all other laws that have passed without the requisite quoram

So Here Is the Question Parliament Has to Answer

The Constitutional Court, in binding decisions, has told Uganda, you cannot criminalise speech. You cannot prosecute people for criticising the government. You cannot use vague, broad criminal offences to silence political commentary, journalism, or civil society activity. Civil remedies exist for those who are genuinely harmed by expression. Use them.

Now look at the Sovereignty Bill.

1. It criminalises engaging in "any activity" that promotes foreign interests against Uganda's interests though undefined.

2. It criminalises receiving foreign assistance for "disruptive activities" though undefined.

3. It gives a single Minister unchecked discretion to decide who is a threat to "national security" and "the surrounding community."

4. It imposes criminal penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for speech and associational activity that Uganda's own Constitutional Court has already said cannot be criminalised.

If the Constitutional Court has already held that you cannot imprison someone for speech, what exactly is Parliament doing creating new categories of speech-related imprisonment in 2026?

The answer, if this bill passes in its current form, will be provided by the same court. The petitions will be filed. The constitutional challenges will be mounted. And Uganda will spend years and significant public resources litigating a bill that could have been correctly drafted from the start, if anyone had bothered to read the cases.

The free speech chill from the Computer Misuse Act was felt most acutely on TikTok and Twitter, platforms where ordinary Ugandans discuss politics, share news, and hold power to account. The Sovereignty Bill, if enacted as drafted, would extend that chill far beyond social media. It would reach civil society organisations, development practitioners, journalists with foreign publication deals, academics in international research partnerships, and lawyers advising foreign clients on Ugandan law. The architecture of suppression would be total, and it would be unconstitutional from day one.

The Boomerang if this law is enacted, it will cause.

A law intended to protect Uganda from foreign manipulation ends up giving foreign governments and international bodies grounds to impose sanctions, withdraw development aid, invoke treaty dispute mechanisms, and publicly label Uganda as a country that criminalises civil society. The very act of over-reaching for sovereignty produces the sovereignty loss it was meant to prevent.

1. Treaty Conflicts

Section 8...The Bill Conflicts With Its Own Foundation

Here is where the irony becomes almost painful. Section 8 of the bill which purports to define and protect Uganda's foreign policy, explicitly includes Uganda's international treaty obligations as part of that foreign policy. The bill is therefore, by its own logic, bound to respect those treaties.

And then it proceeds to violate several of them.

Controversy 01 · Diplomatic Law

1. Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations

   Uganda signed and ratified this Convention. It establishes the right of foreign diplomatic missions to operate, communicate, and collaborate with host country actors. Criminalising a foreigner who "develops a policy without Cabinet approval" sweeps far too wide, it could catch legitimate diplomatic programming, embassy-funded civil society grants, and technical assistance activities that the Vienna Convention explicitly protects. The cross-reference to the Diplomatic Privileges Act in the bill's own schedule suggests the drafters knew this tension existed. They did not resolve it.

2. Controversy 02 · Development Finance

   SDG Commitments, World Bank Frameworks an example of the $2.3 Billion Warning Sign

   Uganda has made binding commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals and participates in World Bank financing frameworks that require aid to flow to civil society, local government, and implementing partners, sometimes directly, without case-by-case ministerial approval. Section 22's approval requirement and Section 24's reclassification of all foreign funding to government-adjacent bodies as "public funds" would likely trigger technical default on several active agreements. Uganda would not be breaking foreign law. It would be breaking its own commitments.

   
   

   Consider what is already at stake. On 10 December 2025, the United States and Uganda signed a five-year, USD 2.3 billion health cooperation Memorandum of Understanding, one of the largest bilateral health agreements in Uganda's history, covering HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and pandemic preparedness, with the US committing USD 1.7 billion and Uganda increasing domestic health funding by USD 500 million. Much of this funding flows through implementing partners, NGOs, and civil society intermediaries.

   
   

   Under Section 22 as currently drafted, any single transaction through those channels above UGX 400 million would require the Minister's written approval. The administrative burden alone would paralyse delivery.

   
   

   The legal risk would deter participation entirely. Uganda signed this MOU in December. It introduced this bill in 2026. The left hand appears unaware of what the right hand is doing, unless the government intends to pick and choose how it will implement certain provisions of this Bill and ignore some.

3. Controversy 03 · Human Rights Law

   African Charter and UN Human Rights Obligations

   Uganda is a party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and has accepted the jurisdiction of relevant UN human rights treaty bodies. Both frameworks protect freedom of association, including the right of civil society organisations to partner with international counterparts. Section 23's sweeping prohibition on receiving foreign assistance to participate in "disruptive activities" (a term not precisely defined) gives prosecutors enormous latitude to target legitimate human rights work. The UN Human Rights Committee will notice. They always do.

   
   

4. Controversy 04 · Trade and Investment

   WTO Obligations and Bilateral Investment Treaties

   Uganda has active bilateral investment treaties with multiple countries and participates in WTO disciplines that protect foreign investors' right to operate and promote their business interests. A provision that criminalises "promoting the interests of a foreigner", without carving out legitimate commercial activity, is incompatible with those treaty protections.

   
   

   The drafting is so broad that a foreign company's routine lobbying of its local partner could theoretically fall within its scope. Expect investor lawyers to notice this immediately.

   
   

The Penalties

The Penalty Structure which is Disproportionate by Design

Let us talk about the numbers, because they are extraordinary. One currency point equals UGX 20,000. The schedule confirms this. Run the arithmetic and the penalties look like this;

Offence	Section	Individual Penalty	Entity Penalty
Unauthorised foreign funding (above threshold)	S. 22	UGX 2B / 20 yrs	UGX 4B
Funding for disruptive activities	S. 23	UGX 2B / 20 yrs	UGX 2B
False declaration of funding source	S. 21	UGX 1.44M / 5 yrs	UGX 1.44M / 5 yrs
Failing to submit returns	S. 26	UGX 2B / 20 yrs	UGX 4B
Bank paying without authorisation	S. 25	—	UGX 4B civil penalty
Obstructing an inspector	S. 28	UGX 40M / 7 yrs	UGX 40M / 7 yrs

Twenty years imprisonment for failing to submit a return to the Minister. That is the same sentence as aggravated robbery in Uganda's Penal Code. There is no proportionality analysis in the bill, no consideration of whether the offence caused actual harm, no graduated penalty structure based on culpability. This is maximum-penalty-as-deterrent drafting, and courts will struggle with it.

"A law where a paperwork failure attracts the same sentence as violent crime is not a law designed for compliance. It is a law designed for coercion."

The Natural Jurisprudential school of thought argues that good law is right reason in harmont withy nature. This Bill is the opposite

The Ministerial Problem

One Minister. Too Much Power. Zero Checks.

Read the bill and count the things the Minister controls, registration, refusal of registration, conditions on registration, suspension, revocation, approval of foreign funding, exemptions from the public funds rule, inspection powers, regulations, and the ability to add new grounds for suspension by regulation alone, without parliamentary approval.

Section 29(3) says regulations shall be "laid before Parliament for information." Not for approval. Not for debate. For information. Parliament is being told, not consulted.

This is a problem for two reasons. First, it creates a single point of political capture, whoever controls the Ministry controls the entire civil society and foreign funding landscape. Second, it almost certainly violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers and may be challenged under Articles 79 and 86 of the Constitution of Uganda, which vest legislative power in Parliament, not the executive.

Sections 17 and 18 do provide that a person aggrieved by the Minister's decision may seek judicial review, which is good. But judicial review of executive discretion in Uganda's courts is slow, expensive, and practically inaccessible for the majority of civil society organisations that this bill would affect. The safety valve exists on paper. In practice, the pressure will build.

The Suitability Inquiry

Your Mental Health Is Now the Government's Business

This one deserves its own section because it is genuinely startling. Section 16(2)(a) empowers the Department to conduct inquiries into the "identity, character, mental and physical health of the applicant", this, as a basis for deciding whether you are fit to act as an agent of a foreigner.

Mental health status as a registration criterion. Think about that for a moment.

This provision likely conflicts with Uganda's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Uganda ratified in 2008 and which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of mental health status. It also opens a door to deeply discriminatory gatekeeping, a person with a history of depression, anxiety, or any mental health condition could be denied registration on grounds that have nothing to do with their professional conduct or the actual risks the bill is meant to address.

The "fit and proper" standard is common in financial regulation, but it applies to financial probity and professional competence, not medical records. Importing it here, applied to civil society workers and development practitioners, is constitutionally and ethically fraught.

What Needs to Change

Where Does Uganda Go From Here?

This is not an argument against sovereign legislation. It is an argument for better sovereign legislation, drafting that achieves genuine national interest protection without creating the very vulnerabilities it intends to close.

Here is what a revised bill should do,

Define the key terms.

"Disruptive activities," "promoting foreign interests against Uganda's interests," and "fit and proper" as applied to mental health need precise, bounded definitions. Vague terms in criminal statutes are unconstitutional, not just in Uganda, but by the standards of every regional and international human rights framework Uganda has signed.

Remove mental health from suitability criteria. Full stop. Professional competence and financial probity are legitimate criteria. Medical history is not.

Recalibrate the penalties. Twenty years for a paperwork failure is not proportionate. A graduated penalty structure, warning, administrative fine, then criminal prosecution for repeated or deliberate violation, is both more defensible and more enforceable in practice.

Create parliamentary oversight of regulations. "Laid before Parliament for information" must become "laid before Parliament for approval." The power to add criminal offences by ministerial regulation is a constitutional overreach.

Build in explicit treaty carve-outs.

The bill's own cross-references to the Vienna Convention and the Diplomatic Privileges Act are an implicit acknowledgment that treaty obligations exist. Make the exemptions explicit. Draft carve-outs for activities covered by existing treaty frameworks, SDG implementing partners, diplomatic programming, UN agency operations.

Cap ministerial discretion.

Create an independent advisory body with civil society, legal, and parliamentary representation to review registration refusals and funding rejections. If the system is fair, transparency will not hurt it. If the system needs opacity to function, that tells you something important about the system.

Conclusion

Sovereignty Cannot Be Built on Unconstitutional Foundations

Uganda has every right to know who is operating on its territory in the name of foreign interests, and to regulate that activity in ways that protect genuine national security. That is not the controversy here. Nobody serious is arguing Uganda should have no foreign influence laws. The controversy is what this particular bill actually does — and how far it departs from what a defensible, constitutional, internationally coherent law would look like.

This bill does four things that make it legally untenable in its current form.

First, it follows a pattern the Constitutional Court has explicitly condemned as defying logic, recycling struck-down legal mechanisms under new names. The POMA went that way. Sedition went that way. Criminal libel went that way. The Court has warned Parliament about this behaviour on the record. This bill ignores that warning again.

Second, it criminalises speech and economic commentary through Sections 7 and 13 in ways that directly contradict the constitutional jurisprudence established in Mwenda v. AG, Onyango Obbo v. AG, and Alternative Digitalk v. AG. Those are not academic precedents. They are binding law. A bill that contradicts binding constitutional law is not bold governance, it is an invitation to litigation that Uganda will lose.

Third, it concentrates regulatory power over all civil society, all foreign funding, and all international economic activity in a single Minister, without meaningful parliamentary oversight, without independent review, and without the due process protections that Articles 79, 86, 88, and 89 of the Constitution require.

Fourth, and most ironically, it puts Uganda in breach of the very international obligations that Section 8 claims to protect. The USD 2.3 billion US health MOU. The SDG financing frameworks. The Vienna Convention. The African Charter. The bilateral investment treaties. Uganda signed every one of these. This bill, as drafted, jeopardises all of them.

A law that contradicts its own stated purpose, defies binding constitutional precedent, and undermines the international agreements it claims to honour is not a sovereignty protection measure. It is a sovereignty risk.

The petitions will be filed. They will succeed. And Uganda will have wasted years, public resources, and international goodwill on a bill that could have been correctly drafted from the start if those responsible had read the cases, respected the treaties, and remembered that sovereignty, properly understood, includes the sovereignty of the Constitution over Parliament.

Read the full Bill below

The Protection of Sovereignty Bill,2026_260415_103006.pdf

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NB.

The full text of Bill No. 13, Protection of Sovereignty Bill 2026, is available from Uganda's Parliamentary records. The author will continue tracking this legislation through committee, plenary, and, if history is any guide, constitutional challenge stages. We welcome responses from the bill's sponsors, legal practitioners, and civil society. The conversation Uganda needs is one where every voice can speak freely, which is precisely what this bill would prevent.