32 LEGAL PRACTITIONERS JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO PROMOTE REGULATORY AND FISCAL POLICES FOR HEALTHY DIETS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY FOR PREVENTION OF NCDS

Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) with support from International Development Law Organization (IDLO), is implementing a subproject under the Global RECAP to promote healthy diets through legal empowerment and social accountability mechanisms, using a human rights-based, participatory, and multi-sectoral approach. The goal of the project is to contribute to an enabling environment supportive of regulatory and fiscal measures that promote healthy diets by working across sectors and engaging communities.

The foregoing is based on the fact that overweight and the associated diet-related NCDs are contributing to 4 million deaths globally, which is mainly due to unhealthy lifestyle choices such as feeding on unhealthy diet high in fats, sugar & salt, play a big role. According to World Health Organization (NCD Uganda country Profile 2018), NCDs in Uganda is estimated to account for 33% of all deaths.

The priority policy areas under the Global RECAP to prevent NCDs and promote healthy diets include nutrition labelling. Restriction of marketing of foods to children, fiscal policy and promotion of physical activity.

It on this background that ULS together with CEFROHT and the Advocacy Working Group (AWG) have developed a Simplified Legal Empowerment Module (SLEM) and adopted the same as a training manual for legal practitioners in continuous legal education.

CEFROHT together with Uganda Law Society (ULS) and the AWG, trained 12 legal practitioners on the regulatory and legal framework on healthy diets and nutrition labelling.  The training was officiated by the Vice President ULS. The purpose of the training was to provide legal practitioners with legal, advocacy skills and human rights-based approaches on utilization of regulatory and fiscal measures to promote healthy diets and physical activity.

The training workshop combined presentations, group discussions, question and answer sessions and breakout working sessions. This training has increased the knowledge of from average of 40% to 75% according to pre & post-training surveys.

For Lawyers’ training, CEFROHT partnered with Uganda Law Society and developed the content for training, and trained the Lawyers from the ULS-FNC. The purpose of the training was to equip participants with reporting, legal and advocacy knowledge and skills required to utilize regulatory and fiscal measures to promote healthy diets.