Nwoya women create legal teams to fight land grabbing

When Ms Angela Abur woke up to the sight of land surveyors plotting coordinates in her yard at Lapono Village, Alokolum-gok parish, Anaka Sub-county in Nwoya District one Saturday morning in April, she thought trouble had come to her doorstep.

The surveyors had been sent on the instructions of a new landlord who had bought a nine-acre piece of land from one of her neighbours a month earlier, according to the 67-year-old.

 Although the incident later resulted in a heated dispute between Ms Abur and her new neighbour that involved police summonses, it later took a week for the sub-county authorities to settle and dispose of the issue.

 “The LC1’s office did not help until I involved the village paralegal team who mediated the matter together with the sub-county land tribunal until it was solved,” Ms Abur said.

Mr Galdino Ongwech, the Anaka Sub-county area land committee chairperson, told Daily Monitor that it took less time to mediate and settle the conflict since Ms Abur already had a certificate of customary land ownership issued to her a year ago.

 “It took less than a week to solve and this made it very easy to identify the boundary and put the two parties to order,” Mr Ongwech said.

According to Mr Ongwech, it now takes less time to mediate and settle land disputes in the sub-county unlike in the past due to efforts from paralegal and action groups of women which started two years ago.

 Just like in Amuru District, women in Nwoya recently resorted to forming grassroots structures to tackle the persisting land rights abuses against the elderly women, single mothers and widows in their communities.

Rescued

In Anaka, Purongo and Alero sub-counties, the women have formed action groups and paralegal teams to mediate in land wrangles and sensisitise communities on equal rights and access to land.

Upon fleeing the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency in 1997 to Masindi District, Ms Abur returned in 2014 to secure her current four-acre piece of land at Alokolum-Gok Village where she has settled with her two children and four grandchildren.

“The women’s group in my village approached me and my neighbours to talk to us about land rights and the need to document and register my land with the district. That is how I got the certificate of customary ownership for my land, ” she said.

Whereas her neighbours initially resisted the move on grounds that it was a ploy to document and grab their land, Ms Abur said she does not regret the decision.

Ms Fiona Aporomon, a member of the paralegal group, and resident of Alokolum-Gok parish, said she joined the group two years ago after fighting to reclaim ownership of a three-acre piece of land from her in-laws when her husband died.

According to her, married women, widows, the elderly and single mothers are entitled to have land under the customary settings but the greed to sell land to buyers, lack of safeguards by the government and population pressure has changed the trend.

“Like we single mothers who returned home after a failed marriage, they (relatives) kick you out of the land, sell it and force you to leave the family. Besides our efforts, the government and civil society organisations must carry out more sensitisation,” she added.

Ms Aporomon said the paralegal structures have helped them resolve land conflicts.

“Upon invitation of the parties, we mediate the wrangles.Using both the paralegal and reflex action groups, we also counsel the parties on the importance of registering their land and having their borders defined,” she added.

In Purongo Sub-county, the paralegal and the reflex action groups do not work in isolation, Ms Veronica Aling, a member of the reflex action group of Lamoki Village, said.

“In barazas and on market days, we also speak to the men, we counsel them since land conflicts don’t involve women alone. In the sessions, we ask the communities to respect and protect women and their rights,” she added.

Ms Alinga said some widows are chased away by their in-laws from their late husband’s estates while elderly women are chased away by relatives who want to sell the land.

Ms Jennifer Apiyo, the district councillor for persons living with disability (PWDs), told this newspaper that many disadvantaged women have land certificates which have shielded them from rampant wrangles, including unscrupulous land buyers and who in the past would encroach on their boundaries.

 “The intervention has opened the eyes of disadvantaged women on their rights and access to land not just those customarily owned but freehold for those that are married,” Ms Apiyo said.

 Meanwhile, the groups do not work in isolation and the intervention has reduced to nearly a quarter the number of conflicts the sub-county would register in a month, according to Mr Ongwech.

He said four years ago, the sub-county chairperson’s office would receive an average of 20 cases on land in a day but today, it gets one case.

Mr Ongwech said its an indicator that people now understand their rights, roles and the need to protect the rights of everyone.

 “In the past, we would hardly sit down as area land committee because we would we organise about three mediations daily even when we did not have transport and other resources to go for the mediations,” he added.

Support

 According to Mr Ongwech, in 2018, these groups were empowered on land rights and justice by ActionAid Uganda, a civil body, to reinforce their knowledge on land matters to be able to carry out their activities effectively.

 He added that ActionAid later started supporting disadvantaged women who had been helped to regain rights to their land to process certificates of customary ownership in the district.

 In Anaka Sub-county alone, there are a total of 486 homesteads who have got their land certified (titled) under this intervention while certificates of 662 homesteads are undergoing processing.

Mr David Komakech, the project coordinator on land at ActionAid Uganda, Gulu office, said the decision to support the groups was based on the backdrop that most resolved land conflicts were recurring.

 “At first we capacitated the women groups to boost their performance but some of the mediated and litigated cases to about 40 per cent were coming back and to have that sorted, we thought of an intervention to help these land owners register their land,” Mr Komakech said.

 He said it is very challenging for such vulnerable people to show proof of ownership of land once not registered “because some of these women are seated on huge chunks but they don’t know the size but rely on verbal evidence, which is easily challenged.”

 He said the organisation, now running the same intervention in Nwoya, Amuru, Gulu and Omoro districts,  encourages land registration and focuses on cheaper models to facilitate women and other vulnerable groups to reclaim their land rights.

 “We are rooting for a more sustainable and durable solution to approaches in land intervention, specifically women land rights protection and  promotion while minimising disputes,” Mr Komakech said.

amuru gets on board

The elderly women, the disabled, and widows in Amuru now know that they have a percentage of land to own off the family estate due to land registration, according to Ms Caroline Adong,  the PWD councillor. Mr Michael Lakony, the district chairman, admits that wrangles and deprivation of rights to land among women and other vulnerable groups are still rampant in Amuru despite the intervention.  “We have many cases of people who are elderly and sick... It is very difficult to handle because their voices are deliberately not heard, so they remain vulnerable and dependent,” he said.

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