Introduction
Uganda’s courts are under siege. As of December 2025, the judiciary reported 198,554 pending cases, of which 48,326 were classified as backlog meaning cases that have languished in the system for more than two years. The High Court alone carries roughly 89,000 pending matters. Chief Magistrates’ Courts are not spared either, holding over 71,000 pending cases. The human cost is staggering: families divided, land contested, businesses unable to recover debts, and citizens watching their disputes age alongside them.
Against this backdrop, Uganda’s Rules Committee, chaired by Chief Justice Dr. Flavian Zeija, on 16th March 2026 made the Judicature (Court Annexed Mediation) Rules, 2026, gazette on 27th March 2026 as Statutory Instrument No. 14 of 2026. The new Rules repeal the older Judicature (Mediation) Rules of 2013 and represent the most comprehensive statutory framework for court-annexed mediation (CAM) Uganda has ever had. This article examines what the Rules say, what they change, and what they signal about the state of mediation in Uganda today.
The Long Road to a Mediation Culture (history of Mediation in Uganda)
Court-annexed mediation in Uganda did not emerge overnight. It evolved from both the recognition that formal adversarial litigation was failing large swathes of the population, and a pragmatic acknowledgment that Uganda simply does not have enough judicial officers to adjudicate its way out of a crisis. With roughly 700 judicial officers serving a population of over 47 million people a ratio of approximately one officer per 64,000 citizens the math has never worked.
The Judiciary piloted court-annexed mediation in select High Court circuits in cooperation with development partners such as the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS). These early initiatives demonstrated that mediation could ease caseload pressure while offering a faster, more amicable alternative. The Commercial Court had adopted mediation rules as far back as 2007 through the Judicature (Commercial Court Division) (Mediation) Rules, No. 55 of 2007. But it was the 2013 Rules that first gave mediation a general, court-wide footing. By 2013, however, mediation had already shown a mixed record: that year, courts recorded a disposal rate of only 60.7% through mediation, down from 73.1%, even as the number of incoming suits grew by 22.6%.
The warning signs were clear. Mediation was structurally embedded but operationally stagnating. Performance had plateaued. As the Registrar for ADR, HW Zuliaka Nanteza, observed at a 2025 mediation performance review, “while mediation has been in place since 2013, its performance had stagnated in recent years.” The 2026 Rules are the legislative response.
What the 2026 Rules Actually Say
1. Scope and Consent
The Rules apply to all civil matters where parties consent to mediation whether at trial court level or on appeal. This is important: mediation under these Rules is ‘consensual’, not compulsory. Parties must agree to have their dispute referred. A judge or magistrate may, with consent, also serve as mediator; but if mediation fails, that judicial officer immediately steps back from the case entirely (Rule 12(6)). This safeguard protects the integrity of proceedings.
The inclusion of ‘appellate mediation’ (Part V) is a notable expansion. Parties to any civil appeal before any appellate court including the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court may now voluntarily submit their dispute to mediation at any point before judgment. The Supreme Court had only just begun piloting appellate mediation in 2025, identifying an initial 14 files for the process. The 2026 Rules now give this practice a firm legal home.
2. Mediator Accreditation
Under the 2013 regime, mediator accreditation was informal and loosely supervised. The 2026 Rules introduce a rigorous, structured pathway. A person seeking to become a court accredited mediator must apply through the Chief Registrar to the Chief Justice (Rule 7). The Case Management Committee reviews applications and makes recommendations. Accreditation is only granted to persons of “high moral character and proven integrity.” An up-to-date public register of all court accredited mediators must be maintained on the Judiciary website.
Critically, the Chief Justice retains the power to suspend or revoke accreditation “at any time” (Rule 8) a blunt but necessary tool for discipline in a profession that depends entirely on trust. The accreditation framework also comes with a detailed ‘Code of Conduct’ (Schedule 2), covering self-determination, impartiality, conflict of interest, confidentiality, advertising, professional competence, and disciplinary procedures. The Code runs to several pages and establishes minimum ethical standards applicable across all mediation styles, whether in-person or online. This level of specificity is new and signals a determination to professionalize mediation practice in a way the 2013 Rules never attempted.
3. The 60-Day Clock
One of the most operationally significant provisions is Rule 23: “mediation must be concluded within 60 days from the date of referral”. This is a firm timeline. It addresses a chronic problem mediation sessions being stretched out indefinitely, parties and mediators adjourning without discipline, and the mediation registry becoming a holding bay rather than a resolution mechanism.
Supporting this, Rule 27 governs adjournments, requiring the mediator to issue a notice with a new date and file it with the court. Rule 6(b) charges the registrar or magistrate in charge of CAM with “ensuring adherence to the mediation processes, procedures and prescribed timelines.” The Code of Conduct reinforces this: a mediator must notify the court before any absence that would prevent timely allocation.
4. Government Parties
A recurring problem in Uganda’s mediation landscape has been the participation of government ministries, departments, and agencies. Without a properly authorized officer with binding powers, mediation sessions stall parties settle in the room but the agreement collapses because the government representative has no authority to bind the State.
Rules 25 and 26 address this directly. The Attorney General or a representative must support MDAs in mediation. More importantly, any settlement agreement a government official signs must first be approved by the Attorney General (Rule 25(2)). For corporations and government bodies, a written letter of authorization specifically Form 7 is required at the first mediation session. This is a practical reform aimed at the dysfunction that has undermined many mediation processes involving public entities.
5. Confidentiality as a Foundation
Part VI contains an elaborate confidentiality regime (Rule 30). All participants must sign a Confidentiality and Inadmissibility Agreement. Proceedings are private; statements made in mediation cannot be produced as evidence in any subsequent judicial or arbitral proceeding. Mediators, parties, and observers are all bound. Electronic recording of sessions is prohibited unless all party’s consent. The mediator cannot be compelled to testify in any court about the mediation.
One important carve-out: confidentiality does not protect information relating to child abuse, defilement, domestic violence, or criminal conduct (Rule 30(4)(b)). This protects against mediation being weaponized as a shield in cases involving serious harm.
6. No Fees for Parties Court Pays Mediators
Perhaps the most democratizing provision in the Rules is Rule 39: “mediators are remunerated by the court, not the parties.” Parties bear only their own costs of participation (Rule 40), such as transport and the time of their lawyers. The mediator’s fees are fully borne by the Judiciary, in accordance with guidelines issued by the Chief Justice.
This removes a significant barrier. In the old framework, parties already spending on advocates faced the additional burden of mediator fees. Poorer litigants or rural communities were effectively priced out of mediation. Under the 2026 Rules, this obstacle falls away.
The Broader Context: Mediation Within Uganda’s Justice Crisis
The 2026 Rules did not arrive in a vacuum. They are part of a broader, urgent reform agenda driven by the Judiciary’s recognition that the traditional adversarial model cannot absorb Uganda’s caseload.
In the 2024 Performance Report, courts handled 161,838 cases against a backlog of 42,588. By the 2024/25 financial year, total pending cases had risen sharply to 190,793 a 17.9% increase. The overall case disposal rate actually ‘declined’ slightly, from 59.7% to 58%. Commercial disputes alone represent cases with a combined monetary value of UGX 5.98 trillion sitting idle in the system. The Uganda Bankers’ Association has flagged this directly: unresolved disputes increase non-performing loans, constrain credit growth, and push up interest rates.
Deputy Chief Justice Zeija (then in that role) declared November 2025 “Settlement Month” and urged mediators to dedicate at least two weeks to intensive sessions. Each judicial officer is now expected to mediate at least five cases per month. The Judicial Training Institute has trained 290 judicial officers and 100 non-judicial mediators in the Eastern region alone, with court-accredited mediators already commissioned in Gulu, Mbale, Mbarara, and other regions.
The Supreme Court began piloting appellate mediation in early 2025, identifying its first files that year. The Court of Appeal followed. These upper-court expansions reflect a recognition that backlog is not a problem only in subordinate courts it runs all the way to the apex of the judicial system, where 563 cases were already classified as backlog.
There is also a cultural dimension that the Rules’ architects are clearly aware of. As Justice Khaukha of the Judicial Training Institute has noted, only about 10% of disputes in Uganda reach the formal courts. The remaining 90% are resolved through community-level, often customary mechanisms. The philosophy behind court-annexed mediation aligns with this reality: it formalizes a dispute resolution tradition that Ugandans have always practiced, bringing it within the court system’s oversight while preserving its consensual, relationship-restoring character.
Conclusion
The Judicature (Court Annexed Mediation) Rules, 2026, are a serious and substantive piece of legal architecture. They transform what was a loosely administered mediation system into a structured, professionally governed, and court-supervised alternative dispute resolution mechanism. The 60-day timeline, the court-funded mediator model, the appellate mediation framework, and the detailed Code of Conduct all represent genuine progress.
But rules alone do not resolve disputes. Uganda’s justice crisis is not merely a legislative problem. It is a resource problem, a staffing problem, and at a deeper level a mindset problem. As the Chief Justice himself has acknowledged, judicial culture has historically been adversarial, and changing that culture takes more than gazette instruments.
The government’s Fourth National Development Plan targets cutting the backlog by half and reducing it to 5.2% of total cases by 2029/30. Mediation is central to that plan. Whether the 2026 Rules provide the right tool to get there depends on whether they are accompanied by sustained funding, expanded accreditation, nationwide rollout to rural courts, and the political will to hold government ministries accountable when they sign agreements but refuse to honor them.
The Rules are, in sum, a framework for hope. Whether that hope is realised will be written not in statutory instruments, but in the lives of the thousands of Ugandans who walk into a mediation room seeking something simpler than a verdict: an end to their dispute, and the restoration of peace.
‘This article is based on the Judicature (Court Annexed Mediation) Rules, 2026 (S.I. No. 14 of 2026), the Judiciary of Uganda’s Annual Performance Reports, and publicly available reporting on Uganda’s court system as of April 2026.’
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