Yesterday members of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group, filed an appeal to the country’s Supreme Court challenging a ruling made by the Court of Appeal which denied them to register as a company because its name is “undesirable” and goes against the country’s colonial-era ‘unnatural offences’ law.
This has been and is still a long road for sexual minorities, but so far it’s worthwhile.“It’s the first case coming from an LGBTQ entity to come to the Supreme Court,” says Frank Mugisha, head of SMUG, adding that the event was a celebration of other LGBTQ rights organizations. He also says that the appeal to the Supreme Court is a milestone for LGBTQ people worldwide, “a precedence for many LGBTQ activists around the world.”
The journey to the Supreme Court is the long-running legal battle with SMUG suing Uganda Registration and Service Bureau (URSB), a government agency whose registrar declined to register the name SMUG citing it as being “against public interest.” The legal battle has been going on since 2016. Under Uganda’s company law, the registrar of companies may stop reservation of a company name “which in the registrar’s opinion is undesirable.”
Since 2004, SMUG has been fighting for legal recognition of LGBTIQ persons, the advocacy group advocates for legal and rights to health services for Uganda’s sexual minorities.
The move to appeal to the Supreme Court is a pushback from the Court of Appeal’s ruling, which upheld a previous ruling by the High Court in which both agreed with the Uganda Registration and Service Bureau (URSB).
Mugisha is hopeful the Supreme Court will make a moral decision and grant SMUG the right to reserve the name and that LGBTQ persons will have the freedom to associate and assemble.
Fox Odoi, a member of Uganda’s parliament and the legislator who opposed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023, says the denial to register SMUG as a company by URSB is because LGBTQ people are seen as sex objects rather than as human beings.
“LGBTQ people are not sex objects. They are law-abiding, hardworking citizens,” says Odoi, who is an ally of the LGBTQ community. Odoi also adds that no one has any right to dictate or choose a name for anyone.
For Mugisha, reserving the name SMUG is very important because it resonates with the LGBTQ community and they will not stop in their fight to keep it.
