In Africa Julia Sebutinde first worked in the
Ministry of Justice in the
Government of Uganda from 1978 until 1990. After graduating from the
University of Edinburgh in 1991, she worked in the Ministry of the Commonwealth in the
United Kingdom. She later joined the Ministry of Justice in the
Republic of Namibia, which had just attained Independence at that time. In 1996, she was appointed
Judge of the High Court of Uganda. In that capacity, she presided over three
commissions of inquiry related to the following government departments: • Corruption in the
Uganda Police At the International Court of Justice In the
2011 International Court of Justice judges election, Sebutinde was one of eight candidates for five vacant judicial seats on the
International Court of Justice, having been nominated by the national groups of
Croatia,
Denmark, and
Uganda in the
Permanent Court of Arbitration. In the election, a successful candidate needs an absolute majority of votes both in the
United Nations General Assembly and in the
United Nations Security Council. On the first day of voting, four candidates were elected but the fifth position was not filled. When voting adjourned,
Abdul Koroma, the incumbent from
Sierra Leone, had received 9 votes out of 15 in the Security Council, with 8 votes needed to elect. Over in the General Assembly, after five rounds of voting, Julia Sebutinde, the contender, had received 97 votes out of 193, with 97 votes needed to elect. When balloting resumed on 13 December 2011, Sebutinde received an absolute majority of votes in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, and thus was declared elected. She was elected for a second term at the ICJ in March 2021. Sebutinde was one of the 17 judges ruling on provisional measures in
South Africa's genocide case against Israel. She voted against all the provisional measures, and was the only
permanent judge to vote against any of the measures. Her dissenting opinion concluded that the dispute in question was essentially political rather than legal, and there was no plausible basis for finding genocidal intent on the part of Israel. The
Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently released a statement that it supported South Africa's position and that Sebutinde's vote "does not in any way, reflect the position of the Government of the Republic of Uganda".
Plagiarism controversy She was accused of plagiarizing large parts of her dissenting opinion from pro-Israel sources, as well as plagiarism from
Wikipedia and the
BBC. According to political scientist
Norman Finkelstein, "at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised", including from writings from
Douglas Feith. The plagiarism includes multiple sentences that are identical with the column,
The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine", by Douglas Feith, such as "In 135 CE, after stamping out the second Jewish insurrection of the province of Judea or Judah, the Romans renamed that province 'Syria Palaestina' (or Palestinian Syria). The Romans did this as a punishment, to spite the 'Y’hudim' (Jewish population) and to obliterate the link between them and their province (known in Hebrew as Y’hudah).", appearing almost identical to Feith's writing.
Pro-Israel Bias In August 2025, the Ugandan newspaper
Daily Monitor published an article suggesting that Sebutinde's judicial decision were influenced by religious fervour, but the next month the same newspaper issued a public statement by Sebutinde stating that certain quotations were "never spoken by her", yet "wrongly attributed" to her. On 25 August 2025, the
International Commission of Jurists sent a communication to the president of the International Court of Justice Yuji Iwasawa, and urged him to remove Judge Sebutinde due to her partiality and pro-Israel bias. The International Commission of Jurists requested that the Court "undertake remedial actions consistent with Principles 17-20 of the UN Basic Principles. In the interim, I would request that you act to immediately remove Vice-President Sebutinde from participating further in proceedings in the South Africa v. Israel case." ==Other posts==