Customary land, public authorities and the reform agenda: the background to three reports from northern Uganda

Julian Hopwood overviews three JSRP publications on land in northern Uganda, and suggests that useful policy interventions should acknowledge the expertise of customary actors at the local level

Women’s land claims in the Acholi region of Northern Uganda: what can be learned from what is contested

Women are often understood to be highly marginalised in typical African customary land regimes. The research presented in this article found that in the Acholi region of northern Uganda this is not the case. The crisis of land conflict that followed the twenty-year lra insurgency and mass rural displacement has seemingly passed, notwithstanding a minimal contribution from the formal justice, law and order sector: local state actors as well as clan elders are mediating and adjudicating disputes on the basis of custom. However some social institutions, in particular traditional marriage, have been deeply affected by displacement and the consequent poverty. In this context, custom appears to be becoming more responsive to the needs of women, including those who are divorced or separated. While women’s customary land claims are often challenged, they appear to be generally respected and supported by communities and those with responsibilities for settling disputes

An inherited animus to communal land: the mechanisms of coloniality in land reform agendas in Acholiland, northern Uganda

Access to land for the Acholi people of northern Uganda still has much in common with understandings of the pre-colonial situation. This paper reflects on how collective landholding has faced over a century of hostile policy promoting land as private property. The notion of coloniality arises in this confrontation: the failure of communication ensuing from understanding Acholi social ordering in terms of false entities; and the foregrounding of land as object. The durability of colonial mechanisms emerges in processes such as the codification of the principles and practices of Acholi ‘customary land’. Pressure for land reform is driven by external bodies, UN agencies, donor governments and international NGOs, claiming to be seeking to protect the interest of the poor. Yet these offer no respite for the growing numbers of landless people - the colonial agenda appears to have its own momentum, serving no one’s interests. Meanwhile misunderstandings and misrepresentations of land holding groups entrenches the subaltern voicelessness of their members, isolating them from any support in dealing with the challenges of too many people on not enough land

Notes from the field: mob justice in Gulu

Julian Hopwood writes about an unsettling event on the field that led him to reflect on mob justice and the complicated moral and political territory it finds itself

Truth, evidence and proof in the realm of the unseen. Part I

Julian Hopwood reflects in this 2 part series blog on matters of evidence in both the Ugandan justice system and in popular understandings of witchcraft

Fragile families, mob justice and resilience in northern Uganda

When a justice system is so corrupt it offers no protection to communities, it has been argued the lynching of accused criminals is an effective resilience strategy. But do such notions of resilience obscure the need for better justice and security structures? The moving story of a local family illustrates the real-world circumstances behind the concepts

Karamojong women and the extremes of insecurity

Julian Hopwood, Holly Porter and Nangiro Saum introduce their recent paper examining the security and justice available to Karamojong women following the Ugandan government’s latest disarmament campaign

Collaborative autoethnography and reclaiming an African episteme: investigating “customary” ownership of natural resources

Collaborative autoethnography can function as a means of reclaiming certain African realities that have been co-opted by colonial epistemes and language. This can be significant in very concrete ways: northern Uganda is suffering a catastrophic loss of tree cover, much of which is taking place on the collective family landholdings that academia and the development sector have categorized as “customary land.” A collaboration by ten members of such landholding families, known as the Acholi Land Lab, explores what “customary ownership” means to them and their relatives, with a view to understanding what may be involved in promoting sustainable domestic use of natural resources, including trees