Research On The Legal Protection For Women’s Land Property Rights In Uganda

Uganda has a dual legal system, and there is contradiction between African customary law and Ugandan statutory law. Meanwhile, Uganda, as a large agricultural country, women accounted for 80 percent of the agricultural labor force, but only 7% of women own land. In this social context, the imperfection of the Ugandan statutory law and the reaction of traditional customary law, which mainly has caused the loss of women’s property rights in Uganda, especially in the field of land property rights. Land is the core resource which can help women maintain life, improve her economic situation, and gain social status. Therefore, it is urgent and significant to improve women’s land property right.The Land Law in Uganda is heavily influenced by English real property law and African customary law. Currently, the main law that regulated land property include: The1995 Constitution, the 1924 Registration of Titles Act, the 1998 Land Law and the 2006 Succession Law. Uganda is private ownership of land, and there are four types tenures of land are recognized by Land Law:(1) customary land tenure,(2) freehold land tenure,(3)leasehold land tenure and(4) Mailo tenure. Since land is a very important kind of resource in Uganda, and women’s land property right would suffered different vulnerabilities in marriage, divorce and widowhood, especially for widows.In practice, there are several obstacles to realize women’s land property rights mainly as below: Firstly, the factor is about the vulnerabilities of Ugandan state-law. It is critical for women’s land property right that solve the internal confused logic of state-law, the conflicts between thee legislative purposes of state-law and related of groups, and unstable land dispute resolution, no matter formal or informal dispute resolution institutions.Secondly, the factor is that the customary law against women property rights. Such factors shows like strong patriarchal male chauvinism, the low social status of women, and generally women are considered the property of men or just a part of home. Customary law prevails in the tribal practice and family practice so far as men dominate over women for a long time and give men more voice about the land and inheritance matters. Finally,the factor is lack of legal education, especially for women. Low education level of Ugandan women caused they lack of legal knowledge about their rights. Therefore, it is necessary to coordinate the gap between state-law and customary law, reform the internal logic of the state-law and related legislation system, with advance women’s education level, through all the proposed solutions finally realize the idea that let everyone knowingand occurs, law-abiding person, thereby achieve better protection of women’s land and property right.