On February 13, 2025 the Minister of State for Internal Affairs, Gen David Rubakuba Muhoozi unexpectedly withdrew the Forensic Evidence Bill, 2024, throwing the Parliament of Uganda into chaos.
The Bill, which was meant to strengthen forensic science in Uganda, had attracted, in equal measure, both praise and criticism. Some members of Parliament were visibly frustrated and questioned why the government had backtracked on such a critical piece of legislation.
According to the minister, the Bill was withdrawn after extensive consultations. It had become obvious that some aspects of the Bill needed to be reviewed and refined.
The minister told the House that the Bill was not dead, but had only been withdrawn to make improvements.
One of the biggest shortcomings of the Bill was that its structure had combined several important national functions in a single institution, which appeared to be placing too much burden on a single institution.
An important recommendation was that the whole structure of the Bill needed revision to align it with existing laws and policies, including the constitutional mandate of the Uganda Police Force.
The Bill designated the Directorate of the Government Analytical Laboratories as the National Referral Forensics and Analytical Laboratory, as well as the regulator of forensic services in Uganda. The combination of the functions of a regulator and a service provider in the same institution was likely to lead to regulatory bias, conflict of interest and inefficiency within the regulatory function.
It was observed that the roles of a forensic services regulator and those of forensic service providers are distinct and should, therefore, be held by separate institutions and should not be carried out by the same institution
It was, therefore, recommended that a separate forensic services regulator should be created with the specific mandate to ensure quality control, accreditation, and continuous training of forensic personnel.
It would, therefore, be wise for the government to create by an Act of Parliament, a Uganda Forensic Services Regulatory Council, not unlike the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council, not only to advise the government on forensic services in the country but also to streamline these services.
Stakeholders were in agreement that the Bill did not comprehensively capture the meaning of forensic sciences and forensic services.
The word forensics comes from the Latin word forensic meaning “of the forum.” The modern definition of the word forensics is “relating to, or used in, or suitable to a court of law”.
Forensic science is related to, and is primarily concerned with evidence. According to one stakeholder, the law whose defect or defects the bill sought to address is the Evidence Act.
There was, however, no cross-reference in the bill to the Evidence Act. The name of the Bill was not only inappropriate but also misleading.
The field of forensic science and forensic medicine is a very wide area. It includes forensic medicine that comprises forensic pathology (death investigations) and clinical forensic medicine (examinations of the living in such cases as sexual assault, forensic psychiatry, and torture and child abuse).
Ballistics and firearm injuries, trace evidence collection and crime scene management are all crucial for evidentiary importance before the courts of law.
To crowd all the field of forensic evidence into a single law is not realistic. There are different laws that deal with death investigations as are laws that deal with sexual offences.
The framers of the bill should have consulted widely before drafting the bill and one of the key institutions to be consulted is the judiciary that ultimately receives and evaluates forensic evidence. The judiciary should have pointed out strengthens and weakness in the forensic evidence received and advised on the way forward. This should be one of the first steps in providing for a comprehensive forensic service law for the country. There have been grave errors at all levels in some of the forensic reports. One doctor reported that the hymen of a victim of sexual violence had been ruptured. Another doctor was emphatic that the hymen of the victim was intact.
In yet another case, one doctor attributed the death of an eighteen year old girl to blunt force trauma due to sexual assault. But two other doctors established that the girl had chocked during an epileptic fit. Such mistakes cannot be corrected by making laws as these are administrative issues.
The Forensic Evidence Bill, 2024 had a section entitled “Management of Chemicals”. To one stakeholder, this section was totally misplaced as there is nothing forensic in terms of science or evidence in the management of chemicals. The registration and certification (for export, import, transport and storage) of chemicals is not about forensics but about safety and standards. These remain the purview of environment and chemical control laws.
To that end, if there are defects in laws such as the National Environment Act and the Agricultural Chemicals (Control) Act, these defects should be addressed by amending those laws. This section, it is recommended, should not be part of a forensic service provision bill but expunged.
A forensic services law should provide for crime scene investigation to cover, among others, crime scene management, crime scene processing and procedures, observation of the chain of custody, crime scene photography and witness statements.
These are ultimately tendered in as evidence in the courts of law and are the mandate of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Uganda Police. The bill did not address this vital component of forensics.
The relation between the DGAL and the Forensic laboratory of the Uganda Police should also be addressed. World over the police have had their own forensic laboratory but the roles of the two forensic laboratories are clearly spelt out. Uganda needs to benchmark on this aspect in order to streamline forensic services in the country.
The Forensic Evidence Bill, 2024 designated the Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratories as the National Poison Control Centre to coordinate and manage poisoning incidences in the country.
It is, however, recommended that the proposed National Poison Control Centre be established as an independent institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Health or housed within the National Referral Hospital.
