What more are in the report?
● Currently, predominant approaches to investment-related rights violations in the field of land and environmental justice in Uganda are reactive, rather than preventive.
● The study fuether revealed that investment violations, when handled improperly or without due regards for community rights, can lead to severe and far reaching consequences.
Kampala, Uganda | Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU), in collaboration with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), has on Thursday, July 31 unveiled a three-year findings.
The research project aimed at strengthening land rights through Preventive Legal Empowerment in Uganda’s Lango, Teso, Acholi, and Karamoja sub-regions.
Over the above period, more than 1,000 land-related investment conflicts and grievances were documented by LEMU, using early warning hotlines, rapid response mechanisms, conflict hotspot mapping, and investor compliance monitoring tools.
These interventions aimed at empowering communities to proactively address land injustices before they escalated.
“Customary land rights holders are most vulnerable to land-based investments because of their undocumented nature and emergence of markets on customary land which makes poor customary land owners to sell their land to investors cheaply,” said Dr. Theresa Auma, LEMU Executive Director and also Principal Investigator in the project.
She revealed that “this project helped communities to act early before conflict takes root and encouraged the community to seek legal support and also engage with potential conflict from a place of agency and legal empowerment, to avoid land related conflict within the communities and also ensure that communities’ land rights are observed.”
She added that the project further explored how preventive legal empowerment support and conflict resolution strategies can help rural communities in Uganda to ensure that their land rights are respected, that communities do not suffer the negative impacts of land-based investments.
Dr. Theresa cited increased displacement, injustice, environmental degradation, impoverishment, and human rights abuses but to also understand how preventive legal empowerment approaches can play a more proactive role in democratic, inclusive governance of land and land-based investments in Uganda.
The projects major focus was around three categories of investments: Forest based investments in Lango (Dokolo) and Teso (Serere) districts. Two, Green energy projects in Acholi (Nwoya district) and, three; Mining investments in Karamoja (Moroto district and Amudat) and Teso (Pallisa) districts.
Under Forest related investments, preventive legal empowerment approaches were effective where the local government leaders at district, sub-county, parish and village levels collaborated with LEMU to address the grievances raised by the communities against investors.
In Dokolo district for instance, the long-standing 217 community-investor conflicts over 200 hectares of Awer forest reserve in Okwongodul sub-county was amicably resolved. The investors had extended their possession beyond the originally allocated land into neighboring community land.
There were grievances around land and land use in Bukoona Ago- Processing Factory, grievances around water, land and air pollution characterized by harmful factory emissions, including water waste that has since lowered the quality of life among rural household members.
All these affect the quality of life of communities around this investment. “Most people now eat food inside their mosquito nets to prevent the strange insects from entering their food,” confirmed a community member during a community meeting Lapem village, Coo-Rom parish, Koch-Goma sub-county in Nwoya district in January 2025.
Furthermore, the study also revealed labour-related grievances characterized by non-payment of labour and supplies, water labour of small-scale farmers who were duped to grow cassava that would be consumed by the factory but this later didn’t take place and also fatal and disabling accidents and injuries evidenced among the factory workers.
Under mining investments, the study found that community labour is vastly being exploited by investors who indiscriminately recruit labour including child labour, land is taken from community members without compensation of surface rights, there is high level of environmental degradation.
Most of the promises made both oral and written in contractual agreements were hardly delivered on by investors as revealed by compliance tools designed for the study.
While land-based investments promise economic transformation, they often leave rural communities exposed to exploitation, displacement, and environmental harm.
The Preventive Legal Empowerment initiative offers community-rooted solution; one that ensures the voices and rights of customary landholders are not just recognised, but also respected and upheld.
Preventive measures for protecting rights of communities in the contexts of land-based investments as hereby promoted against reactive measures that respond after harm has already occurred in communities.
By empowering communities to act early, monitor investor behavior, and engage with legal tools, Uganda moves closer to equitable, transparent, and inclusive land governance.
All stakeholders; government, civil society, and private sector are therefore called upon to scale up efforts to safeguard the land rights and livelihoods of Uganda’s most vulnerable populations.
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