Former Columbia University fellow, a current UN judge, found guilty of forcing young woman into slavery

An African U.N. Criminal Tribunal judge who was a fellow at Columbia University and has written extensively about human rights has been convicted of slavery.

Lydia Mugambe, a 49-year-old Ugandan living in Kidlington, England, was found guilty Thursday by a unanimous Oxford Crown Court jury of conspiring to violate U.K. immigration law; “requiring a person to perform force or compulsory labor”; conspiracy to intimidate a witness; and arranging travel for another person “with a view to exploitation.”

Besides her work for the U.N., the African slaver has been a judge of the High Court of Uganda and a member of several professional associations, including the Oxford Human Rights Hub and the International Association of Women Judges.

Mugambe’s virtue-signaling and judicial activism regarding “gender-based justice” earned her the so-called People’s Choice Gavel Award from Women’s Link Worldwide in 2017. According to a 2022 piece in Stellar Woman magazine celebrating the slaver’s supposed accomplishments, Mugambe also won the Vera Chirwa human rights award of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, for her work “ensuring gender-based justice in Africa.”

Columbia University, no stranger to criminals and extremists, notes on its website that the slaver was a fellow at its Institute for the Study of Human Rights in 2017.

“Lydia Mugambe used her position to exploit a vulnerable young woman, controlling her freedom and making her work without payment,” Eran Cutliffe, special prosecutor for the Crown Prosecutor Services’ Special Crime Division, said in a statement. “Modern slavery and the exploitation of people by others for their own purposes has no place in modern society.”

‘Mugambe used her position of power as well as her knowledge of the law to take advantage of the victim.’

The Thames Valley Police received a tip on Feb. 10, 2023, that Mugambe was holding a young woman as a slave at her residence in Kidlingon. According to police, Mugambe obtained a visa for the victim to work in the U.K. with the understanding that the victim would work for the deputy high commissioner at the Ugandan Embassy in London, John Mugerwa — and receive compensation for doing so.

The former Columbia fellow paid for the victim’s plane ticket, picked her up from the airport, then forced her into slavery. The victim was forced to perform the functions of a domestic maid and nanny without pay.

The Crown Prosecution Service indicated that Mugambe stole the victim’s passport, biometric visa card, and phone, thereby isolating and grounding her.

According to the prosecution, Mugerwa was in on the scheme and facilitated the victim’s visa knowing that she was destined for slavery. In return for his help getting her a slave, Mugambe would provide the deputy high commissioner with help in a court case back in Uganda, said the prosecutors.

While there was apparently ample evidence of Mugerwa’s conspiracy with Mugambe to enslave a fellow African, the deputy high commissioner had diplomatic immunity, which his government decided not to waive.

Chief Superintendent Ben Clark of the Thames Valley Police said in a statement that given her experience as a lawyer and U.N. Criminal Tribunal judge, “there is no doubt that she knew she was committing offenses by bringing the victim to the U.K. under the pretense that she was going to work for the then Deputy High Commissioner at the Ugandan Embassy in London, thus providing her a legal route of entry, but knowing all along that she intended to make the victim work in servitude.”

“Mugambe used her position of power as well as her knowledge of the law to take advantage of the victim, ensuring that she would become her unpaid domestic servant,” added Clark.

According to the chief superintendent, Mugambe tried to use her affiliations with the U.N. and the Ugandan High Court as way to avoid accountability for enslaving a woman.

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