Land wrangles top major legal problems, says report

A new report released in Kampala yesterday shows that land wrangles form the biggest part of the daily legal needs of Ugandans.

The report dubbed “Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Uganda 2024” shows that 42 percent of the people have been involved in land disputes.

Also, 23 percent of the people had experienced more than one legal problem, considering land disputes as the most serious.

“In terms of age, land problems are significantly more common as the most serious problem among older people than younger people, especially people over the age of 40, often indicate their most serious problem is a land problem,” the report that was launched by Principal Judge Flavian Zeija, read in part.

Adding: “The five most common categories remain the same, but their order changes. For around 23 percent of Ugandans who experienced at least one legal problem, a land problem is the most serious problem.”

The other legal problems that Ugandans mostly face in their daily life besides land disputes are neighbor disputes that stand at 42 percent, crime at 39 percent, family problems at 37 percent, and domestic violence at 33 percent.

The research was randomly sampled amongst 6,300 adults both in the rural and urban places between September and October 2023.”

Among the sample questions were whether they had experienced any legal problems in the previous year, what they did to resolve them, and how they perceived the resolution process and the outcome.

The research showed that at least 95 percent of Ugandans had a legal problem in the reporting period.

Further, the report showed that land disputes have slightly shot up over time compared to the previous reports published in 2016 and 2020.

For example, the 2016 report showed land problems were at 21 percent, 22 percent in 2020, and 23 percent in 2024.

Eleven percent of Ugandans subsisting with land problems are aged between 18 and 24, 16 percent of Ugandans with a land problem are aged 25 and 39 years, 31 percent are aged 40-64 years whereas 34 percent are aged above 60 years, according to the latest report.

 “Ugandans do not sit and wait for their problems to disappear, but take active steps to attempt to address the issue. To resolve their most serious problem, people can talk directly to the other party in conflict or engage a third party,” the report read in part.

The report recommends that the government should adopt prevention and resolution mechanisms to target the population.

It also urges the government to continue collecting people-centered justice data regularly and emphasises strengthening the link between customary and informal justice actors and the formal justice system.

The Principal Judge in his remarks said the Judiciary has heavily invested in alternative channels in a bid to quickly resolve disputes in the courts of law.

He also said the report is an indictment to the institution on why they shun the formal courts and opt for local courts.

“We are encouraging judicial officers around the country to embrace Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as a quicker process of resolving disputes and also minimising case backlog,” the Principal Judge said.

The Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Uganda reports are legal research publications funded by the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HIIL).

They are devoted to making justice more accessible through the development of people-centered services.

Their goal is to ensure that by 2030, 150 million people will be able to prevent or resolve their most pressing legal problems.