Grassroots Women’s Models for Strengthening Gender Rights in Tenure Regularization in Jinja District Uganda World Bank Land and Poverty Conference 2016 Nangobi J, Ransom P.

Who We Are – Slum Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID) – Jinja, Uganda founded 2003 – Organization by and for grassroots women – Joyce Rosemary Nangobi, Director – Membership growth from 30 to over 600 – In 1980s and 1990s, Jinja industrial town, large population seeking employment, high impact HIV/AIDS, overcrowding and eviction – Member Huairou Commission

Swid’s Mission – To improve on the quality of lives of people in Jinja Urban slums and Rural communities through empowering them meet their social, political and economic needs in a sustainable manner".

What We Do – Empower women with organizing skills – Enhance women’s participation in decision making – Enhance women’s role in advocating for improved service delivery in land offices – Inform women of procedures to follow when applying for land titles – Disseminate educational materials – Distributing information at meetings and seminars – Use media

Working with with Women Jinja Ugana

The Power of Local to Local Dialogues – Three women’s groups including SWID organized a dialogue – Main agenda: Curbing land grabbing. – Key Participants: – Officials from the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development, Town Clerk, Local Government, District Land Chairperson, NGOs and grassroots women. – Key Outcomes – Women allocated 30 acres of land by the Ministry of Lands – Helped respond to land grabbers – Empowered women by SWID – to organize dialogues, effectively presented their issues

Core Achievements – Formation of housing cooperatives – Three housing cooperatives formed – Helps women buy land and construct houses – Women are saving in a revolving fund – Enables them to borrow money to process land titles – Over 300 people have processed land titles – Also helps women get loans for housing and agricultural production

Ongoing Progress Processing Titles 2016

Ongoing Challenges  Titling process still costly and cumbersome  Many abandon the process midstream  Lands Department administration and staffing problems  Ongoing delays in titling and conversion from one tenure system to the other  High public dissatisfaction  Applicants use middlemen--exorbitant fees/cheat applicants  Still loss of documents in the land office

Key Recommendations and Needs  Resources to disseminate information on land registration  Government restructuring of District Land Board  Strengthening Area Land Committees  Full land inventory  Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) to guide land regularization  Government lifting of budget ceiling on the land sector to improve staffing