For them, however, another key issue hindering their ability to effectively resolve land disputes was their lack of authority to negotiate a solution that would be respected by parties to a dispute. Leaders expressed frustration that their decisions carry little to no weight in the formal justice system, which leaves them with no enforcement capacity. The direct result of this is that wealthy, powerful and better educated disputants ignore customary rulings that are not in their favor or bypass informal mechanisms of land dispute resolution altogether. Finally, traditional authorities also reported being threatened and intimidated by disputants: “Some people abuse us and threaten to kill us. For example, one time they threatened us and we abandoned the case. Some people are ignorant about the law, that is why they threaten us with abuses and killings.”68 As a result, leaders admitted either refusing to intervene in cases or making a ruling in favor of the party exerting threats. It was anticipated that members of the formal justice system would be resistant to the idea of integration, primarily out of fear that integration might diminish their own power and authority. On the contrary, members of the formal sector were strongly in favor of integration.69 Respondents cited the formal system’s lack of institutional capacity to resolve all of the land dispute cases and the customary system’s accessibility, particularly for women and the poor. They also acknowledged that the non-adversarial dispute resolution methods utilized by traditional leaders avoid the ‘winnertakes-all’ problem, thereby ensuring greater community cohesion, which is particularly needed in the post-conflict areas of northern and eastern Uganda.
5. Evaluating ULA’s land justice project in terms of legal empowerment Legal empowerment, while still a nebulous concept, is distinctly different from typical rule of law projects in that it focuses explicitly on the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. A 2009 report of the United Nations Secretary-General to the United Nations General Assembly defines legal empowerment as “the process of systemic change through which the poor are protected and enabled to use the law to advance their rights and their interests as citizens and economic actors.”70 An effective legal empowerment strategy arguably entails three key components. First, legal empowerment initiatives should begin with a solid understanding of the experiences and perspectives of disempowered populations. Second, initiatives should provide meaningful opportunities for the targeted population to participate in the design of the legal empowerment strategy. Finally, including the poor in the process of evaluating the actual delivery of services is critical and should be an integral and ongoing part of any legal empowerment endeavor. In this regard, while it is still too early to judge the effectiveness of ULA’s Land Justice Project, important insights can be gleaned from the design process and preparatory activities. 138
The fieldwork on which this chapter is based confirms that ULA has a deeply contextualized understanding of the challenges facing community members, traditional authorities, and the formal justice sector when it comes to resolving land disputes. ULA designed the pilot project with a number of factors in mind. First, ULA recognized that the project needed to be embedded in each target community so that it could be responsive to the expressed needs of individual community members. Setting up a Land Rights Centre and staffing it with a local community member was a critical demonstration of ULA’s commitment to legal empowerment. Further, rather than creating a hierarchy of stakeholders (community members, traditional authorities, and formal justice sector actors) in which community members represent the bottom rung, ULA’s project was designed to treat them equally. Second, ULA was keenly aware of the proliferation of land conflicts in northern and eastern Uganda and understood that immediate action was required to contain the outbreak of inter-clan violence. ULA recognized the volatility of the situation and appreciated the role that land plays in keeping the peace. Hence, after weighing efficacy and expediency considerations, ULA decided that it had to utilize and strengthen existing capabilities and resources rather than trying to create something new