An interview with Stella: land rights professional and activist with LANDnet Uganda.

Recently, we virtually “met up” with Stella Rose Akutui, the Capacity Building and Networking Officer with LANDnet. Stella has been one of many amazing Ugandan women driving the women’s land rights agenda – we celebrate her achievements and the avenues around which Uganda is leading the thinking and action on land rights in Africa.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got into ‘land’?

Hi, I’m Stella Rose Akutui and I graduated with a Bachelor Degree of Laws from Uganda Christian University. I also have a Certificate in Community Development and I’m working towards a Master’s Degree in Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University.

I’ve been working with LANDnet Uganda as the Capacity Building and Networking Officer since 2018. In this role I help to build the capacities of the land management institutions and community champions so that they can advocate for women`s land rights from an informed point of view.  In this role I’ve also developed training materials – for example, Step by step guide for conducting community outreaches for the community champions that LANDnet Uganda supports in the 14 districts of operation, A training manual for the male and female champions, I also contributed to the development of the training manual for the Local Council Courts on their roles and procedure in handling customary land related cases. Stella has also conducted several community dialogues, sensitizations and training drives that aim at not only creating awareness but also empowering and building the capacities of the communities that LANDnet supports on several topics not limited to Human rights, women’s land rights, gender and land, Gender based violence (GBV) and Women’s Economic empowerment to mention a few.

Working on land and more so on women land rights is a passion I developed while still at degree level after learning and reading from the experiences of many women worldwide. In my first job I learnt a lot about awareness creation, the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) approaches especially mediation and conducting free legal aid mobile clinics to try to resolve land related cases where women were the most affected.

My passion grew, leading me to join LANDnet – but also to really get involved in the national agenda. Firstly, by coordinating the Women`s Land Rights Movement in Uganda which is a loose coalition of about 20 members advocating for gender equality in property and land rights.  Secondly, I have also been very instrumental in organising and mobilising rural women to commemorate some of the annual international days such as the International day of the Rural woman celebrated on the 15^th of October to recognise the enormous untold contribution of rural women in almost all sectors but specifically Agriculture, Health, trade etc. , a drive that has been taken up and owned by the line ministries especially the  Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development.

It`s also worth noting, I have been privileged to contribute to the regional women’s land rights agenda, where  I was  invited as a key technical expert to support the development of the National Women`s Land Rights Agenda  and the action implementation plan 2021-2025 for Uganda. I was also in the organising committee for the Regional Women`s land rights Conference held from 29^th-31^st June 2021. I have participated in the pre-test of the Land and Gender Trainer of Trainers manual for land actors in Uganda, which was organised by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).  I’m also a member of the Centre of Practice (CoP) – which is experience learning and capacity building platform created by the IGAD Land Governance Unit, premised on enhancing the capacities of different Civil Society Organizations on different issues that affect the realization of security of tenure for women in the IGAD region.

And recently I coordinated and fundraised for the successful 3^rd Women’s Land Rights conference Uganda, held virtually from the 10^th-11^th August.

Yes, we heard you had recently been very busy with the 3^rd National Women’s Land Rights Conference – Tracking progress of Women’s rights to land in Uganda 2016-2021 and implications to national socio-economic transformation. 

Can you tell us a little more about your role and how you became involved?

The conference was organised under the auspices of the Women’s Land Rights movement that I mentioned – who have been implementing different activities towards the achievement of the 10 minimum demands. Those are the ones we are tracking their progress in realising the state of women’s land rights in Uganda.

My role was to coordinate the overall conference – so this meant conducting planning meetings for the sessions, identifying the presenters, conception of the conference theme and breakaway sessions – together, of course, with other members of the Women’s Land Rights Movement. I also doubled to be in the fund raising team of 5 members from different organisations. This role I assumed automatically as the designated officer coordinating the Women’s Land Rights Movement hosted at LANDnet Uganda.

I heard on day 1 you had more than 1000 participants!! Congratulations! How on earth did you manage this?

Thank you very much for the congratulatory message. Well, team work- I had a very dedicated and tireless team that pulled this off, we joined all the necessary forces, seriously fundraised for everything in this conference.  Members of the WLRM through their direct donors and well-wishers had to divert some of the funds to ensure this conference was a success.

We had very good representation of all government departments, civil society organisations, Academia, and international participants from as far as India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Liberia, Djibouti, Kenya, USA etc, as well as a representation of project beneficiaries, champions of women’s land rights etc. from the 4 regions in the country. These beneficiaries were facilitated with internet data, a conference hall, and some refreshments to attend the virtual conference that lasted two days. These logistics were organised through the community structures that the members of the WLRM have in those regions.

On the issue of advertising for the conference, we started this very early just to tickle people’s minds on what the conference was going to be all about as we were still building up the ideas here and there on all our networks and platforms (social media-Twitter, facebook, linked in etc) every member of the WLRM had to best use their networks and platforms. There was a very dedicated publicity team that developed all the conference banners, and profile banners for visibility.

What were some of the key topics discussed? How would you say women’s land rights have progressed over the last five years in Uganda?

The conference was structured in a way that the most emerging issues were brought in as topics of discussion. Let me list a few of these:

1. Gender and Land Documentation: for example whilst we have existing laws, there remains the question of: are they working for the women when it comes to documentation? What challenges do women face when advancing their land rights -and are there some opportunities that we can put forward? And lastly: what can be done to enable women to access financial services more easily.
2. Gender and Large-Scale Land Based Investments: In situations of land acquisition for development, the crops women grow most such as tomatoes, greens, onions among others are not always considered in the compensation list and are normally destroyed without compensation. This risks food insecurity, and is worsened by women’s limited access to information, and lower during consultation – particularly during negotiations for compensation since men tend to claim ownership of the land.
3. Land and Women’s Economic Empowerment: This discussion aimed to address multiple questions. Why is increasing women’s access and ownership to land a very important aspect in addressing women economic empowerment? How do we support women’s resource empowerment in the face of discriminatory legal and customary law provisions, some of which reinforce gender inequalities, as well as social norms and practices?  What initiatives or best practice have been introduced by government and CSOs to uplift the WEE agenda in Uganda?
4. Building a Customary Land Registry for Uganda: Prospects for Women’s Land Rights. This session was to explore how the proposed establishment of a land registry system to support the registration of land rights under customary tenure is likely to impact women’s land rights in Uganda, bearing in mind that in Africa and Uganda specifically, it is worsened by the social norms, beliefs and patriarchal attributes of land, legal attachment and recognition of land and property ownership rights.
5. We also had a panel discussion on the Women`s Land Rights through a Legal and Policy eye: Lessons for the WLRM: The discussion was premised on how the Courts of Judicature have been instrumental in ensuring access to land justice by women in a bid to secure their land rights. The facilitator Lady Justice Olive Kazaarwa shared experience on the effectiveness of the adversarial justice system and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in promoting women land rights. She also highlighted the barriers women encounter in navigating the formal courts systems and proposed recommendations for addressing the barriers. This session also discussed the role of traditional institutions in enhancing women land and justice rights, challenges, gaps and opportunities for effective service delivery by traditional structures.
6. How do we leverage on the existing platforms and expertise to build a strong, vibrant but self-sustaining WLRM? This session was very specific and important because it aimed at sharing: insights into the future, traces the broad past as well as the present context of movement building for WLRs. What are the dynamics likely to influence movement building in the next 5 years? How does the WLRM in Uganda prepare for that?

There was further sharing of approaches from the IGAD region to help move the women’s land rights agenda forward for the next 5 years, this brought a realisation that region wide, women are still grappling with inequality but the approaches employed can be borrowed from other jurisdictions to help elevate the plight of women everywhere.

I should say women’s land rights are steadily progressing though at a minimal speed, through the joint efforts and interventions from the government, Civil society organisations and academia. More women are becoming aware of their land rights and at least can assert them in case of any violations because a lot of effort is given to creating awareness on their land rights and the laws available that protect them.  For example, there are annual land awareness weeks specifically designated for awareness creation. There is an increase in the number of women who own land in their names and or at least jointly with their husbands and their names appearing in the CCOs. In the land administration structures, women are active in leadership to protect the interests of women.  There are also attempts by government to amend some of the land related laws like the Land Act of 2008 with the amendment of 2010, the Succession (Amendment) Bill 2018 to be consistent with the Constitution of the republic of Uganda which is the supreme law.

Is there one key observation that sticks with you from the event?

Virtual conferences if facilitated well are the way to reach a wider audience with the information that we need to pass across. Most times we are constrained by finances but with joint effort from all stakeholders on this course, we can achieve more. What stood out for me was the fact that the upcountry representation was evident both male and female who have already shared their success stories on what they learnt from being included as part of this conference is very fulfilling and gives me more motivation to do more to reach them often with information.

What do you think are the next steps for land and gender practitioners and activists in Uganda?

• Getting back to the drawing board and employ strategies that aim at active inclusion of male and female in all interventions. LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND.
• The Women’s Land Rights Movement is for all people and not one person or one organisation… if we joined forces we will be stronger, better together and achieve even more in the women’s land rights agenda.
• Create more strategic platforms for women to realise their full potential on women’s land rights since land is our backbone and security.
• More advocacies towards the passing and assent of gender related bills especially the Succession (Amendment) Bill 2018 which aims at gender equality on issues of inheritance and succession.
• More awareness on land rights, referral pathways, government initiatives especially on women’s economic empowerment.
• Capacity building of various stakeholders to actually understand their mandate in promoting women’s land rights.
• Need for male positive feminists to get out of the comfort zones and make their hands and legs dirty to spread the need to change others mind sets and support women in the struggle for equal land rights.

Read more about the Women’s Land Rights Conference on LANDnet’s webpage, including a snapshot of Day 1 presentations https://www.landnet.ug/video-3rd-national-womens-land-rights-conference-uganda and podcast of the event https://www.landnet.ug/podcast-3rd-national-womens-land-rights-conference-uganda.