Our land is our life. We are here to defend it.
Across the Albertine Rift, in Bunyoro, Acholi, and beyond, families are being pushed off land their grandparents farmed. This is not development. This is dispossession. And we refuse to accept it.
Across the Albertine Rift, in Bunyoro, Acholi, and beyond, families are being pushed off land their grandparents farmed. Investors arrive with documents communities cannot read, officials sign away acres that do not belong to them, and overnight, people who have lived somewhere for generations become trespassers on their own soil. This is not development. This is dispossession. And we refuse to accept it.
“When a family loses their land, they lose everything: their food, their income, their children’s future, and their dignity. Land rights are not a legal technicality. They are a matter of survival.”
Land In Our Names: standing with communities on the ground
The LION program works alongside Ugandan communities to reclaim, protect, and formally secure land rights, starting with those who have been most systematically left out.
Know your rights
We train community members to understand land law, recognise illegal evictions, and challenge contracts that were signed without their knowledge or consent.
Fight back legally
We connect communities with lawyers and paralegals who can take exploitative deals to court, halt illegal land grabs, and hold corporations and officials accountable.
Secure what is yours
We help women and families obtain formal land titles so that no one can take what belongs to them. A title in your name is protection that outlasts any government or any company.
Four fights we are taking on
Land injustice in Uganda takes many forms. We are tackling each one directly, in partnership with the communities living it every day.
01. Stop foreign land grabs before they destroy communities
The problem
Foreign companies, often backed by powerful governments, are acquiring vast tracts of land in Uganda's resource-rich areas through corrupt deals that bypass communities entirely.
Our response
We use legal tools to challenge and block these acquisitions, ensuring that no deal goes through without the free, prior, and informed consent of the people who live there.
02. Make the law work for ordinary people, not against them
The problem
Uganda's land laws protect citizens on paper. But without legal literacy or access to courts, those protections mean nothing to a farmer facing eviction.
Our response
We bring legal education directly to villages, and we build a network of community paralegals who can navigate the system on behalf of the people who need it most.
03. Keep families on their land and out of poverty
The problem
Displacement is one of the leading drivers of poverty, conflict, and hunger in Uganda. When people lose their land, communities unravel. Children drop out of school. Families go hungry.
Our response
By securing land tenure before displacement happens, we protect the foundation that everything else in a family's life is built on. Prevention is far more powerful than recovery.
04. Put land in women's names
The problem
In Uganda, women do most of the farming but own almost none of the land. Without a title, they can be evicted by a husband's family after his death, or overlooked entirely in community decisions.
Our response
We prioritise land titling for women. When a woman owns her land, her children are fed, her household is stable, and her voice carries weight in her community.
We measure what matters
Not press releases or donor reports. Real change, counted in real lives.
Evictions challenged
in court
Titles secured
for women
Communities trained
in land law
Stand with families defending their land
Partner with CECIC on land rights, legal support and land titling for women.