Indigenous, mobile, and local communities all over the world have for millennia played a critical role in conserving the earth’s patrimony. They have protected forests, wetlands, rangelands, watersheds, hunting grounds, rivers and streams and other water catchment systems that are to day the basis of prosperity for all nations. “Community” husbandry of these resources has been done for a wide range of reasons ranging from economic, cultural, spiritual, aesthetic to many others.

The ways in which people obtain land in Uganda are changing fast. Land that used to be secured through inheritance, gifts or proof of long-term occupancy is now more commonly changing hands in the market. Those with wealth and powerful connections are frequently able to override local rules and gain access to land at the expense of poorer individuals. Government-backed agribusiness investors receive large areas of land with benefits for some local farmers who are able to participate in the schemes, while other smallholders see their land access and livelihoods degraded.

Unfolding analysis reveals two types of land disputes prevalent in postwar northern Uganda: cases that involve a legitimate cause of action and those that do not.1 Since mediation and alternative forms of dispute resolution rely on parties’ willingness to negotiate in good faith, cases featuring ‘bad faith’ and land grabbing—where powerful parties intentionally exploit another person’s vulnerability in order to illegally2 claim land—pose a serious challenge for local land dispute mediators. Such mediators must wrestle with whether and how to remain neutral in the face of injustice.

Uganda’s northern region was traditionally inhabited by communities with predominantly pastoral lifestyles. As the country began developing administrative structures in the region, most clans found themselves settled into agro-pastoral communities. The elders found it imperative to demarcate areas of land to fit different uses, with areas for family settlement and cultivation clearly separated from other areas for communal use. Land was either demarcated by the leaders of a particular settlement or by the dominant clan for the benefit of everyone else in that area.

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.

Conflict associated with land has increased substantially following the return of peace to the Acholi Region with the return of internally displaced people (IDP), population growth, and increases in the value of land. The area is heavily dependent on agriculture and conflict related to land access seriously threatens to undermine development and the social, political and economic stability of the Acholi Region. This study involved community members, key informants, and statutory and traditional leaders in three sub counties in each of the seven Acholi districts.

This guide has been written as an information resource for government officials, community leaders, humanitarian aid workers, judges, lawyers and others whose responsibilities include upholding land and property rights in Uganda. It outlines the main provisions of Uganda’s constitutional and legal framework and the protection these provide to property rights. It briefly outlines the historical background to existing land tenure relations, describes the constitutional provisions relating to land in the 1995 Constitution and sets out the main provisions of the Land Act 1998.

Legally recognized and secure land and resource rights are fundamental to the advancement of global peace, prosperity, and sustainability. From the development of human cultures to the realization of democracy itself, tenure security underpins the very fabric of human society and our relationship to the natural environment. Today, insecure tenure rights threaten the livelihoods and wellbeing of a third of the world’s population, and with it, the very future of our planet.

The fourth paragraph of the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia (hereinafter referred to as the 1945 Constitution) has very clearly stated the aim of the establishment of the Unitary State of Republic of Indonesia (NKRI) is "to protect all the people of Indonesia and all the independence and the land that has been struggled for, and to improve public welfare, to educate the life of the people and to participate toward the establishment of a world order based on freedom, perpetual peace and social justice ".

This report comprises of a comprehensive assessment of the status of land governance in the Indian state of Odisha, by using the World Bank’s Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) during 2013-1014. This report presents its findings. The assessment was taken up in nine distinct thematic areas of land governance as envisaged in the LGAF.

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.

Writ­ten sub­mis­sions on the Communal Property Associations Amendment Act to the Portfolio Committee Rural Development and Land Reform