IJLLC | Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge in Uganda: Development, Problems and Perspectives

Indexing and Abstracting

Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge in Uganda: Development, Problems and Perspectives

Otim Enoch

International Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (IJLLC), Vol-4,Issue-3, May - June 2024, Pages 1-10, 10.22161/ijllc.4.3.1

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Article Info: Received: 10 Apr 2024, Received in revised form: 15 May 2024, Accepted: 25 May 2024, Available online: 05 Jun 2024

Abstract:

The secret of the efficacy of traditional knowledge is tightly bound to the healthy survival of global biodiversity. Over the ages, this knowledge has suffered a lot of exploitation at the hands of outsiders who either took away the knowledge from their societies and patented the same as their invention (without the consent of the indigenous communities) or made commercial benefits with the misappropriation. This has often led to the erosion of the knowledge from the communities (at times the knowledge is lost forever because only a particular member of the community held the knowledge). This misappropriation has arisen out of the lacuna that there is no effective sui generis system for the protection of traditional knowledge. The efforts and achievements of the communities have never been recognized. Effective legislation and a strong political will are the need of the hour to check this exploitation and prevent the loss of knowledge from future generations. The present article is aimed at identifying the problems that are inherent in the legal protection of traditional knowledge in Uganda. An attempt has also been made to highlight the steps that have been taken so far at the national level and the probable future endeavors to safeguard traditional knowledge.

Keywords:

Development, Legal protection, Perspectives, Problem, and traditional knowledge.

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