Dr Grace Nakamya Ssemanda

Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya & Burundi Expert — Human Rights, Political Situation & Asylum Cases

Expert at The Human Rights Experts, an international expert witness organisation.

We provide expert witness reports for asylum cases worldwide, covering human rights violations, political persecution, and systemic oppression. Our reports are trusted by lawyers, courts, and immigration authorities, in full compliance with procedural standards and tribunal requirements in the UK (CPR Part 35, Upper Tribunal PD, First-tier Tribunal IAC PD), USA (Federal Rules of Evidence), Canada, and the EU.

Occupation

• Country Witness Expert on the African Great Lakes and East Africa
• Human Rights Specialist
• Legal Researcher and Academic Consultant
• Independent Journalist and Investigative Reporter on Human Rights

Expertise

I provide expert analysis on all five Refugee Convention grounds — political opinion, religion, ethnicity, membership of a particular social group (including LGBT and gender-based cases), and nationality — with a focus on the following countries:

Uganda: Uganda's political space has narrowed significantly under prolonged single-party dominance, with opposition politicians, protest leaders, and their supporters subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture by military intelligence operatives, and the deployment of lethal force against demonstrators. The 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act introduced the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and prison sentences of up to twenty years for same-sex conduct, making Uganda one of the most dangerous countries in the world for LGBT individuals, who face state-sanctioned persecution, mob violence, eviction, and denial of healthcare. Journalists and civil society organizations critical of the government operate under constant threat of detention and prosecution under the Computer Misuse Act and public order legislation. Women face high rates of domestic violence, marital rape — which is not criminalized — and land dispossession through customary inheritance practices, particularly in northern regions still recovering from the Lord's Resistance Army conflict. Religious groups outside mainstream Christianity and Islam, including traditional practitioners, face periodic harassment.

Tanzania: Tanzania has experienced a significant constriction of democratic space, with the ruling party consolidating control through restrictive media regulations, the banning of political rallies outside election periods, and the harassment of opposition politicians and their lawyers. LGBT individuals face severe persecution under both law and social practice, with leaders publicly encouraging citizens to report suspected gay persons to the authorities, and police conducting raids on NGOs providing health services to sexual minorities. The Maasai and other pastoralist communities face forced displacement linked to the expansion of tourism concessions and conservation areas, often accompanied by the burning of homes and use of force by security personnel. Women experience widespread gender-based violence, with limited access to police protection and judicial remedies in rural areas. Refugees, predominantly from the DRC and Burundi, face periodic threats of camp closures and forced repatriation.

Kenya: Kenya's security forces continue to carry out extrajudicial killings with impunity, particularly targeting young men in low-income urban settlements and ethnic Somali communities in the northeast during counterterrorism operations. Electoral cycles trigger ethnically motivated violence and displacement, and land disputes rooted in colonial-era dispossession fuel intercommunal conflict in the Rift Valley, Coast, and Tana River regions. Women and girls in pastoralist and coastal communities face female genital mutilation and forced marriage, while survivors of sexual violence encounter institutional barriers to accessing justice. LGBT individuals face criminalization under the Penal Code and experience physical attacks, blackmail by police, and discrimination in employment and healthcare services. Refugees and asylum seekers from Somalia and South Sudan face encampment policies that restrict their movement and economic participation.

Burundi: The ruling party in Burundi maintains control through a combination of intelligence-led repression and the deployment of the Imbonerakure youth militia to surveil, intimidate, and physically attack perceived opponents at the community level. Former military officers, journalists, and civil society leaders who fled during the 2015 crisis face the risk of assassination, even in exile, and family members who remain in Burundi are subjected to reprisals. Ethnic dynamics between Hutu and Tutsi populations, though officially denied by the government, continue to inform patterns of targeting and exclusion from state institutions. Women face pervasive domestic violence, with limited legal avenues for redress and cultural norms that normalize spousal abuse. Same-sex relations are punishable by imprisonment, and LGBT individuals face violence and extortion.

Experience

• Prepared over 150 expert witness reports on conditions in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Burundi for UK and US asylum and immigration proceedings
• Provided expert testimony in cases involving Ugandan LGBT asylum seekers, Tanzanian opposition activists, and survivors of election-related violence in Kenya
• Conducted research for international human rights NGOs on political repression, refugee protection, and gender-based violence in the East African region
• Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and Gender Studies, Makerere University, School of Law
• Expert member of The Human Rights Experts

Full professional experience is available in the CV. Please email us to receive the detailed expert CV.

Publications

Available upon request and detailed in the expert CV.

Languages

• English (Fluent)
• Luganda (Fluent — native speaker)
• Swahili (Fluent)
• French (Basic understanding)

Religious Groups Expertise

All religious groups

Contact Email

info@thehuman-rights.com