Project Brief: Women’s Land Rights in Busoga, Uganda.
The Society for Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID), with grant support from the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), is empowering women and girls in Kamuli and Kaliro districts, Busoga, Uganda, to secure their land rights. Through awareness campaigns, community engagement, and collective land title applications, SWID is breaking down cultural and legal barriers that limit women’s access, ownership, and control over land.. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DO5eEwLtvsgarYTTWbOR04CyWSdEbbiT/view
Slum Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID) acknowledges grant support from the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) towards implementing a two-year project entitled “Promoting women and girls’ rights to land in Kamuli and Kaliro District in Busoga Region, Uganda”. The project goal is to raise awareness of women and girls’ land rights and the right process of acquiring a land title. The project activities are directly benefiting 300 people majority of whom are women and girls, and indirectly benefit 1500 people (women, girls, men, and boys).
We extend our sincere gratitude to the community-based women groups, Local Government, through the chairpersons of Local Council I and II of Kaliro and Kamuli District, respectively, for walking with us on the same journey towards promoting women and girls’ rights to land.
Organization Background.
Slum Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID) is a Non-Governmental organisation that was started in 2003. SWID was formed when the Masese-Walukuba community was selling off the houses formerly owned by the Jinja Municipal Council, resulting in land grabbing. This kind of condition was a result of traditional beliefs that denied women and girls the right to inherit land and property after losing their spouses or parents, discrimination and stigma among HIV- positive women, a wide gap between leaders and community members, and a lack of knowledge of their legal rights. This prompted 30 grassroots women to form SWID to advocate against land grabbing and the unjust evictions in Walukuba housing estate in Jinja, Uganda.
The organisation is licensed to operate in the Busoga Sub-region in 8 districts, working both in urban and rural communities. SWID is committed to ensuring that issues related to do with land tenure security, regardless of how complex and multidimensional they are, should be dealt with using a holistic approach. SWID’s approach is the collective application for land titles, which is cost-effective for poor women and girls, and it reduces the risk of women and girls falling victim to middlemen who overcharge in the pretex of processing land titles. SWID’s vision is “An adequate shelter for every woman”.
The Mission is to strengthen and mobilise the voice, visibility, and collectively organise the power of women in the Busoga Region through changing norms, institutions, policies, and practices that perpetuate inequality and violence in both public and private spaces. SWID’s objectives are: ensuring that men and particularly women have equal rights to economic resources and basic services, ending extreme poverty, and reducing inequalities to ensure sustainable water, land, food, and energy and to build the capacity of SWID to implement and strengthen its mandate.
Overview of The Project Under Implementation
