(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A United Nations judge in the United Kingdom has been convicted of modern slavery and immigration offenses after exploiting her authority to force an African woman to work as a maid and babysitter without pay.
Lydia Mugambe, an influential judge on Uganda’s High Court and the UN’s Criminal Tribunal, obtained a worker’s visa for a Ugandan woman under the guise that she would work as a staffer at the Ugandan Embassy in London in 2023.
According to official immigration paperwork, Mugambe claimed the woman would specifically work for John Mugerwa, then-deputy high commissioner at the Ugandan Embassy in London.
Instead, Mugambe, who was a student in the U.K., picked the victim up from the airport, took her home and forced her to work as a personal slave.
Local investigators believed that Mugerwa assisted with the fraudulent paperwork, but he was shielded from prosecution by diplomatic immunity as Uganda refused to honor his arrest warrant.
Mugambe attempted to invoke the same immunity by citing her status as a UN judge, but the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General waived her claim.
Lydia Mugambe, a UN tribunal member and Ugandan High Court judge, has been CONVICTED in the UK for modern slavery offenses. She lured a young woman to Britain under false pretenses—then forced her into unpaid servitude as a maid and nanny. pic.twitter.com/SbXDRtMaX9
— Grifty (@TheGriftReport) March 14, 2025
“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,” said Oxfordshire police chief Ben Clark in a press statement.
“Lydia Mugambe is an extremely qualified lawyer, a Ugandan High Court Judge and a UN Criminal Tribunal Judge,” Clark stated earlier in his remarks.
He added, “As such, there is no doubt that she knew she was committing offences by bringing the victim to the UK under the pretence 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.”
