Damalie Naggita-Musoke
Law
University of Wisconsin at Madison

EDUCATIONAL/PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Master of Laws [Nottingham University, UK], Diploma in Legal Practice [Law Development Centre, Uganda] plus other Diplomas and certificates in International Law and Women’s rights. Currently SJD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am also a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University in the Department of Law and Jurisprudence where I have since September 1993.

ACHIEVEMENTS
During this time, I have been head of my department for a period of about 4 years, which responsibility entails being chief examiner of the department, as well as being in charge of departmental administrative and academic matters. I have also served as Deputy Dean of my Faculty since 1999 until 2002 when I joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison for my doctoral studies.

I am active in the women’s movement in Uganda and in 1994 I researched, wrote and presented a paper on women’s rights in conflict situations in Uganda at the NGO Forum of the Dakar Regional Conference on Women. This presentation, among other things, highlighted the need for peace and security if women’s rights in Uganda were to be properly protected and it drew on the experiences of women in the « Luwero triangle » in central Uganda where most of the 1980-1986 liberation war was fought. My involvement in the women’s movement drew my attention to the plight of women with disabilities who feel that they are isolated and marginalized even within the women’s movement and eventually to the plight of pwds generally.

SIGNIFICANT LIFE-EXPERIENCES
The most memorable in as far as my current project is concerned is when I had the opportunity to be the academic supervisor to the first ever blind student admitted to the faculty of law at my university. I got to learn and appreciate some of the inadequacies in our society and realized that for peace building and security to be meaningful in our society, it must include the empowerment of pwds, a big number of whom are thus as a result of wars and conflicts. This particular student was blinded during the 1981-86 war.

Apart from that, I have the experience of interacting with my maternal grandfather, who was became blind as a result of skirmishes over land and who I would ask as a child, how he was able to see-since he was always able to go about his business with the minimum of inconvenience to others. I also went to school with a child who had an impairment due to polio and who was so mercilessly teased by both teachers and pupils that he eventually dropped out of school. I think of the hopelessness that I felt that I could not help him and the fear and helplessness that I always saw in his eyes.

I have also lived through most of the wars in Uganda and have experienced both directly and indirectly the ravages of war. Programmes and plans have been charted for reconstruction, mostly physical of war- ravaged areas as well as those for compensation for loss of property, but none for large groups of pwds that have instead resorted to begging for their livelihood.