The Land Observatory
BACKGROUND:
The Uganda Land Alliance is a consortium of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working on land or land related issues in Uganda. It specifically lobbies policy makers to guarantee the rights of poor people on land and land derived livelihoods. Its mission is to enhance access, control and ownership of land by the poor women, men, children and marginalized groups through the promotion of fair policies and laws for the promotion of land rights. According to this mission it is incumbent upon Uganda Land Alliance to provide all the relevant information on land to the citizens of Uganda to be able to access, control and own land and this can only be done from a knowledge based point of view thereby calling for a land observatory.
The Land Observatory is a one-stop centre from where answers to land queries are verified with credible reference using the available information. The Land Observatory has been designed in a manner that allows the visitor to download the entire content of the available data with ease and all documents are available in a variety of download formats, all free of charge. It is a free resource for civil society organizations, governments, business, multilateral institutions and all other local and international actors dedicated to identify, assess and address land issues in their areas of operation thereby propose recommendations that can mitigate land problems from time to time.
The key objective of the land observatory is to enable all stakeholders to access information on land and effectively engage in discussion of land related issues that can lead to legal reform. There is lack of information relating to land law and its processes and the means to systematically gather this information. The observatory aims to fill some of these gaps and help the stakeholders to identify areas where they have the responsibility and the opportunity to intervene for better laws on land. Land in Uganda has tremendously had and caused many problems that range from poor ownership of land, land grabbing, destroying of crops, killing of animals and worst of all loss of life and so on.
However, the major reasons for creation of the land observatory derive from our inability to fully access and understand the available land law and its processes because we lack the zeal to collect the basic data.
Secondly, even with available information we still lack means to analyze, integrate and synthesize data across scales from different sources. This then, makes it difficult to build sufficiently accurate decision support systems that can predict the effects of land law and its processes on society.
Based on experiences with other observatories there is every reason to believe that this Land Observatory should;
o Provide land data needed for developing better land laws and policies in addition to the processes.
o Promote the integration of relevant land laws and policies strategy.
o Group land information in more complete, uniform and transferable.
The contents for the observatory shall include;
- Laws/Statutes/Policies
- Analysis of land matters with reference to existing laws and decided cases
- Major legal documents
- Photo gallery
- Video gallery
Please take off some time to explore our rich resources and feel encouraged to make any suggestions for improvements. Send all comments to the Observatory Officer on E-mail: prossie@ulaug.org
