Northern Uganda is currently recovering from a 20-year long civil war that left the area in ruins. One of the groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army, orchestrated brutal mass murders and abductions forcing nearly two million people to live internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps for over 10 years. The war particularly affected the people of Acholi and Lango sub-regions which had previously suffered sporadic attacks by armed Karamajong cattle rustlers from north eastern Uganda.

Government is frequently charged with failing to finalise key policies relating to traditional authorities, for example, local government roles and functions, and communal land tenure. Whilst it is true that important issues remain unresolved, it is also true that the issues themselves are very complex and that some have become so politicised that rational debate is hindered. This section addresses some of these policy areas in a manner which hopefully enables rational debates and viable solutions. 

AFRA’s work at Ekuthuleni started in 1998. It’s now 2004, six years later, and we have to confess that we have failed. It is not possible to secure tenure at Ekuthuleni, for the purposes for which people want that security, within the current legal, technical and institutional frameworks. A small window of opportunity still exists that might allow us to reverse this judgement.

The 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda is one of the most gender sensitive constitutions in the world, with clear provisions for promoting and protecting the rights of women. This is also the case in relation to women’s land rights – the Constitution clearly vests land in the people of Uganda, including the rights of women to own and inherit land. Other land laws, including the Land Act, recognize and uphold women’s rights to land as individuals, and as part of a family or community.

In view of the lack of human resources with specific competencies in costumary land rights, within the past two decades FAO and various non-governmental organizations have developed materials and methodologies for the dissemination of the Land Law and the participatory delimitation of rural communities. Materials and methodologies were developed based on practical experience of several land projects implemented over a period of approximately 20 years.

Post-conflict northern Uganda has witnessed an increase in disputes over land. This has, to a great extent, been as a result of the armed conflict and its aftermath. Beyond that, other chaotic factors embedded in various social, legal, economic, and political aspects of this society have influenced the nature, gravity, and dynamics of these disputes and the way in which Traditional Institutions and the Local Council Courts have attempted to resolve them.

Northern Uganda is the scene of one of the world’s most volatile and spontaneous processes of reintegration. There are approximately 1.1 to 1.4 million people in the Acholi sub-region at the time of writing3 ; 295,000 internally-displaced persons (IDPs) remain displaced either in IDP camps or transit sites. Approximately 800,000 Acholis have already left the camps and spontaneously returned home over the last three years.

This paper examines the evolution and the nature of the current forms of land tenure in Masindi District and the extent to which these forms impair or facilitate positive socio-economic changes. Such an examination is vital in light of the fact that there exists no convincing empirically grounded studies on the impact of the official land policies on the relationships between forms of land tenure, social structure and agricultural production.

Over 80% of all land in Uganda is held under unregistered ‘customary tenure’. This means that it is private property, but the owners need no documents to prove ownership. Their claims to the land, and the boundaries of the land, are locally recognised, and this recognition is given the full protection of State law.

The protection given to the land rights of women, orphans and any other vulnerable groups in Northern and Eastern Uganda is probably as good as can be found anywhere in the world. Customary land law is based on three main principles. First, everyone is entitled to land, and no-one can ever be denied land rights. A second principle is that all inherited land is family land, never individual property.

SERI worked with the Housing Development Agency in the course of 2015 on a research project on securing tenure in informal settlements on customary land. It involved in-depth research in four informal settlements in four provinces and culminated in a set of recommendations for the HDA and other role players. One of the key issues identified in the research was lack of awareness about IPILRA rights (the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act) among the key stakeholders.

We believe that law should in principle assist vulnerable communities in changing power relations. Law is fundamentally a ‘neutral’ set of rules that constrains power by requiring decisions and actions of those in power to comply with legal rules, rights and obligations. Unfortunately, we have seen the powerful appropriate law as a tool for only protecting and strengthening their interests.