Land Tenure as a Cause of Tensions and Driver of Conflict among Mining Communities in Karamoja, Uganda
Publisher: Margaret A. Rugadya
Date: 2019
Topics: Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources, Gender, Land, Livelihoods
Countries: Uganda
This paper offers insight on the missed narrative of land and resource conflict beneath the reality of gemstones and ores in the inchoate industry of limestone, marble and gold mining by communities in Karamoja-Uganda. Land tenure is often disregarded as a cause of tension or driver of conflicts especially in the design of responses to conflict situations in mining areas. Land tenure is considered to be an intricate, historical and perplexing factor in conflict, and the response to its manifestation is often limited to the formalization of the bundle of surface (land) rights and sub-surface rights (mineral). This paper describes the forms of conflicts attributed to land tenure, based on a case study in mining communities. It articulates the need to address such land-resource conflicts by applying responses based on property rights recognition to fully capture the bundle of rights on customary land and improve the leverage of communities with land rights in claiming benefits from mining actions. The paper is arranged in six sections; a short introduction, methods, land tenure and mining regimes in communities, women in mining, description of conflicts due to land-resource tenure and property rights recognition as a response to conflict.