The ruling could underscore a growing anti-gay crackdown across Africa, including in Ghana where lawmakers also passed an anti-homosexuality law in February. It also could have economic implications for Uganda, Africa’s largest exporter of coffee beans.

Passage of the anti-homosexuality legislation in the East African nation last year triggered sanctions including from the World Bank and U.S.

The World Bank halted new lending to Uganda while the U.S. announced visa and travel cautions.

Under the AHA law same-sex acts and related activities attract various punishments including death for the offense of aggravated homosexuality while gay sex attracts life sentence.

The ruling is expected at 10:00 am (0700 GMT), one of the lawyers for the petitioners Nicholas Opiyo wrote on the social media platform X.

Once the verdict is announced, a dissatisfied party can appeal to the Supreme Court.

The law drew widespread condemnation from the West and local human rights activists.

Petitioners against the law include a lawmaker and Frank Mugisha, Uganda's most prominent LGBTQ activist. They asked judges to strike AHA down, citing reasons including that it violates their constitutional rights.

Mugisha has previously said widespread anti-homosexuality sentiment in Uganda was driven by ultra conservative groups in the nation and the West.

"I am hoping they (judges) do the right thing and annul the law fully in its entirety," Mugisha said, adding, "but my fear is that the anti-gay groups did a lot of propaganda before the law was introduced and so that might sway the judges."

The nearly 50,000 victims covered by the order included former child soldiers and children born as a result of rapes and forced pregnancies.

Dominic Ongwen was convicted three years ago of 61 offenses, including murders, rapes, forced marriages and recruiting child soldiers in 2002-2005. An ICC appeals panel upheld his convictions and 25-year sentence in late 2022, setting the stage for an order for reparations.

“Tens of thousands of individuals suffered tremendous harm due to the unimaginable atrocities committed" as rebel fighters led by Ongwen attacked four camps for displaced people in northern Uganda, said Presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt.

"Similarly, over 100 women and girls and thousands of children, boys and girls under the age of 15 suffered profound, multifaceted harm as a result of being kidnapped. Many were later subjected to sexual and gender-based crimes and/or forced to serve as LRA soldiers, being kept in captivity with cruel methods of physical and psychological coercion,” he added.

Ongwen was not in court for the reparations hearing. While he is considered liable for the reparations, the court ruled that he is indigent and said the reparations will be paid by a trust fund for victims set up by the court's member states.

Schmitt urged “states, organiations, corporations and private individuals to support the trust funds for victims' mission and efforts and contribute to its fundraising activities.”

He said victims would each receive 750 euros ($812) as a “symbolic award” while other reparations would come in the form of community-based rehabilitation programs.

Evidence at Ongwen's trial established that female civilians captured by the LRA were turned into sex slaves and wives for fighters. The LRA made children into soldiers. Men, women and children were murdered in attacks on camps for internally displaced people.

“The chamber concludes that the direct victims of the attacks, the direct victims of sexual and gender based crimes and the children born out of those crimes, as well as the former child soldiers, suffered serious and long-lasting physical, moral and material harm,” Schmitt said.

The LRA began its attacks in Uganda in the 1980s, when one of the court’s most-wanted fugitives, Joseph Kony, sought to overthrow the government. After being pushed out of Uganda, the militia terrorized villages in Congo, Central Africa Republic and South Sudan.

Ongwen was among those abducted by the militia led by Kony. As a 9-year-old boy, he was transformed into a child soldier and later a senior commander responsible for attacks on camps for displaced civilians in northern Uganda in the early 2000s.

Defense lawyers portrayed him as a victim of LRA atrocities. But the judge who presided over his trial called Ongwen “a fully responsible adult” when he committed his crimes.

Activists welcomed his convictions for offenses against women, which included rape, forced pregnancy and sexual slavery.

Kony, whose whereabouts are unknown, faces 36 charges, including murder, torture, rape, persecution and enslavement. Prosecutors are seeking to hold a hearing into the evidence against him at the court in Kony's absence.

The LRA leader was thrust into the global spotlight in 2012 when a video about his crimes went viral. Despite the attention and international efforts to capture him, he remains at large.

ICC cases against three other LRA leaders were terminated after confirmation that they had died before they could be arrested.

The license will allow the Ugandan company, which has partnered with a unit of West China Cement Limited, to mine limestone and produce about $700 million worth of clinker, a raw material for cement, annually.

The project will have the capacity to produce 6,000 tons of clinker a day and 1 million tons of cement annually, with the cement factory aiming to be the largest in Uganda, the ministry said in a statement.

President Yoweri Museveni's government is banking on sectors such as mining and energy to support economic growth and attract investment.

The East African country expects to start pumping crude oil commercially in 2025.

Uganda has been dissatisfied with the longstanding system under which its fuel companies buy 90 percent of their supplies through affiliated firms in Kenya. President Yoweri Museveni has complained this exposes his country to supply disruptions and high pump prices.

In response, Uganda announced in November it would hand over exclusive rights for supply of all petroleum products to a unit of global energy trader Vitol.

The East African nation imported $1.6 billion worth of petroleum products in 2022, mostly originating from the Gulf.

Museveni’s government planned for imports to still arrive via Kenya, but Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said the Kenyan government refused to grant the required license.

"We are negotiating with the Tanzanian government. The technical teams are talking, and I will be meeting Her Excellency, the president on that," Nankabirwa said, adding, "we want to find a route that will keep us safe in terms of petroleum supplies."

Kenya's Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority and Tanzanian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.