This research forms part of a larger study on large-scale land acquisition in Uganda. There are three main components of this study: (1) a “risk map” that identifies areas “at risk” for land acquisition due to their high suitability for biofuel crop production; (2) a due diligence report on the existing land uses and users of land identified as “at risk” in the first activity; and (3) an assessment of the land acquisition process, including applicable social and environmental safeguards.

The protection given to the land rights of women, orphans and any other vulnerable groups in Northern and Eastern Uganda is probably as good as can be found anywhere in the world. Customary land law is based on three main principles. First, everyone is entitled to land, and no-one can ever be denied land rights. A second principle is that all inherited land is family land, never individual property.

In the developed countries less than 20 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. The rest is employed in the industrial sector. In the underdeveloped countries less than 10 per cent of the population is employed in the industrial sector and the rest is engaged in agriculture. At once this dictates that, for some time to come, the route to development in the latter countries will depend on agriculture, which also mainly depends on land policy and tenure. The land question is a contradiction in land rights and consequential social, economic and political abuses replicated on it.

In northern Uganda, common grazing lands are central to village life. While nominally used for grazing livestock, communities also depend on their grazing lands to collect basic household necessities such as fuel, water, food, building materials for their homes, and traditional medicines. Yet growing population density, increasing land scarcity, weak rule of law, and the 1998 Land Act’s legalization of a land market have created a situation of intense competition for land in northern Uganda.

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.

Property rights economically empower women by creating opportunities for earning income, securing their place in the community and ensuring their livelihoods. When women are economically empowered, it spurs development for their families and communities. Property Rights and Gender in Uganda: A Training Toolkit seeks to strengthen understanding of property rights for women and men as equal citizens.

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.

The Uganda National Land Policy (NLP) Implementation Action Plan is a deliberate resolution by the Government of Uganda to address major challenges that have hindered the implementation of land reforms, thereby impeding the optimal utilisation of land for socio-economic development and transformation. Although successive post-independence governments have made numerous efforts to streamline land governance and reconfigure the role of land in national development, the majority of these efforts have failed to address underlying issues and have thus remained unimplemented to date.

The current pressures on land are huge and expected to continue growing: there is rapidly escalating competition between the demand for land functions that provide food, water, and energy, and those services that support and regulate all life cycles on Earth.

This study emerged out of an identified need to document social processes leading to land insecurity, and those leading to investment and sustainable use of lands by rural populations. Focusing on the Delta and Dry Zone, the main paddy producing regions of Myanmar, this analysis unravels the powers at play in shaping rural households’ relationship to land.

RCDC assigned a task of compiling a report on the functioning of PESA in the state of Odisha based both on secondary analysis and primary survey at field level, to a local consultant organization National Institute for Development Innovation(NIDI) in late 2010. Agreeing with our observation that the report submitted under the same required further improvements and enrichments the consultant made fresh efforts in 2011 and submitted an improved version of the same without any extra charges.

The brief review in the repor concludes of various disturbing aspects of the socio-economic context that prevails in large parts of India today, and that may (and can) contribute to politics such as that of the Naxalite movement or erupt as other forms of violence. It should be recognized that there are different kinds of movements, and that calling and treating them generally as unrest, a disruption of law and order, is little more than a rationale for suppressing them by force.