Uganda - Women's political leadership

General

This one year project will be very helpful in consolidating the gains realised in a previous project delivered in 2017, to foster women's political leadership in Northern Uganda. Despite its very complex theme and context, in just 10 months of implementation this earlier project achieved some notable results including: building the capacity of district and local women's organisations on effective advocacy; training women councillors, traditional leaders and journalists on gender and women's rights and engaging with women judges and over 2,300 community members in discussions about women's rights. In the proposed project we aim to further these initial gains to achieve 2 main outcomes: 1) The Maputo Protocol and other regional declarations on women's rights are increasingly applied by national government and traditional justice mechanisms 2) Women's political leadership in northern Uganda is fostered to address women's land rights and violence against women and girls Working with a local partner Uganda Women's Network (UWONET), these outcomes will be achieved by, on the one hand, supporting women leaders to influence policy makers on women's rights issues using the skills and knowledge generated, and on the other, by continued dialogue with religious and cultural leaders, the justice system, local community members and other key actors on women's land rights and violence against women and girls. Specifically we would like to deepen work in the following areas: • Engagement with women judges and lawyers to ensure judicial activism for gender responsive court rulings • Engagement with Parliament for gender sensitive legislative frameworks • Training women councillors and selected male councillors to acquire skills in effective lobbying • Development of a gender sensitive land justice toolkit to equip judges with skills in land justice dispensation • Capacity building and support for 3 district networks to strengthen lobbying and influencing skills on vio