In sum, rather than working against custom, policymakers and activists should be creative in identifying a range of culturally-appropriate solutions within custom that can successfully strengthen, defend and protect women’s land rights. Some of the ways in which this can be done are:

• Although customary law does not give land rights to a divorced woman in the marital home, it does ensure land rights in her maiden home. Such rights should therefore be enforced to ensure that all women, no matter their marital status, have strong land claims – and can return “home” to adequate land of their own, should the circumstances of their lives dictate.

• Land rights for all categories of women are already provided for under customary tenure laws. However, efforts are needed to fortify women’s strength so that they are able to better protect and enforce their land claims.

• The solution is therefore not the inappropriate imposition of rights from freehold tenure onto customary lands – but a more nuanced, culturally-appropriate modification of customary rights to ensure women’s equal rights within the customary legal framework.

• Many men are failing in their responsibilities and are even perpetrating abuses against those they are supposed to protect. Policy should therefore not villanize customary laws, but rather acknowledge that men are disregarding their customary obligations, and take steps to both recognize men’s customary duties and consistently hold men to account, through proactive enforcement of state and customary laws.

• Instead of perpetuating the myth that “customary tenure does not allow women to own land” (this theory is now often quoted by male land grabbers to justify their actions), activists can now use these documented customs to uphold the established customary rights of women.

• Traditional institutions in Lango and Teso recommend planting particular boundary trees agreed upon by the clans as a valid land marker. They suggest planting these specific boundary trees before there is conflict and before husbands, fathers, or fathers-in-law die and women and children become vulnerable.

• Families to draw simple maps of their land, showing its size and location (as bordered by neighbors’ lands, trees, roads, streams, and other landscape-based evidence) and signed by all the family owners, neighbours, and Area Land Committees, to be used as evidence of their land rights in a court of law. Copies of these maps should be given to many people to keep.

• Where the traditional institutions fail in their responsibilities, the government must step in through police enforcement of women’s customary rights. Local police should be trained to understand relevant formal and customary land and inheritance laws, to fairly and equitably address land-related crimes (such as those listed in S.92 of the Land Act), and to enforce court judgments of land cases.

Extracted from “Understanding and Strengthening Women’s Land Rights Under Customary Tenure in Uganda,” by Judy Adoko and Jeremy Akin of the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU) andRachael Knight of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO