In Uganda, the government  has put in place a number of laws and policies regarding land administration. Despite the laws and policies in place, most of them are outdated and with little enforcement due to lack of awareness and capacity of the land management administration systems. More than 80% of Uganda’s land is owned customarily and therefore the large amount of conflicts on this tenure system cannot be ignored.

During We Effect partners’ planning meeting, it was agreed to have an advocacy campaign carried out in respective countries and each country was expected to identify an issue to follow up on. Uganda partners identified access to land as the advocacy issue to address. A committee comprised of We Effect; ACFODE; SSA and NAWOU identified the theme as: “Women Land Rights Awareness.”

SSA in partnership with NAWOU have conducted several dialogues on land rights awareness. The findings showed that women regularly undergo denial of their housing and land rights due to informal and customary practices. Some of the cases identified included widows who were disposed of their land due to the fact that they were not considered legally married to their deceased husbands. There was also an aggravated gender based violence case in form of arson. Other cases involved entire cooperatives losing land to investors and family heirs attempting to evict cooperatives from land previously gifted to the cooperatives.

These insidious means of violation of a woman’s right to land and home often escape the monitoring process and elude quantification. It is against this background that SSA: UHSNET together with Nawou conducted a training of the leaders in AWACH improved primary housing cooperative society who are members of Uganda Housing Cooperative Union. the training involved local leaders in the area as well as the cooperative leadership.

These were equipped with skills in the legal framework on land, the common land disputes and how they can be handled and the reporting structures in case of a dispute. these were also taught how to properly document a land case and also how to conduct mediation and write proper rulings/ judgements.