Canaan Nkamuhabwa, 35, is a dedicated lawyer and human rights advocate currently serving as the Legal Officer and Senior Defender at Justice Defenders Uganda. Canaan holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London, completed in 2022 under extraordinary circumstances, while incarcerated. He exemplifies the transformative power of legal empowerment and education behind bars.
Canaan leads Access to Justice initiatives across four prisons in Uganda, supervising a team of lawyers and nearly 100 trained incarcerated people and prison staff paralegals, providing free legal services to economically disadvantaged incarcerated people—those often overlooked by the formal legal system due to poverty or marginalization. He has in the past played an instrumental role in public interest litigation efforts, notably in cases challenging the death penalty in Uganda and indefinite detention of individuals found to be of unsound mind.