According to the blog The African Bride, Uganda has finally unveiled its long awaited revisions to the Marriage and Divorce Bill. Seems the updates have been about 4 decades in the making. The bill, which gives women the right to divorce an impotent husband also does the following:
establishes equitable distribution of property between spouses upon divorce, providing co-habiting couples with the same rights to property as married people; for the first time in Uganda, it also establishes marital rape as a crime. The wide ranging piece of legislation outlaws the practice of widow inheritance and makes it an offense to demand the return of bride price upon dissolution of a marriage.
The most important thing is that the laws in Uganda finally recognize the “non-monetary” contributions of aggrieved women to a broken marriage, aka, childrearing, and finally gives them means of redress in a divorce.
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