Use traditional courts for land disputes, Amongi tells cultural leaders

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Police reports from the Teso sub-region indicate that a high percentage of domestic disputes stem from land conflicts.

More broadly, land disputes remain a significant challenge across Uganda, driven by factors such as population growth, unclear land ownership, and inadequate land management systems.

These disputes often involve boundary disagreements, wrangles over family land, and instances of land grabbing, sometimes escalating into violence and lengthy legal battles.

However, the Minister of gender, Labour and Social Development, Betty Amongi, has called on cultural leaders to make use of their traditional clan courts to resolve such matters, in order to promote fairness and expedite justice.

“It’s the President’s wish that you, as clan leaders, begin to be the right problem solvers in your communities. There are many things that happen within your areas in terms of land conflicts; those grievances should be solved within the clan systems,” Amongi said.

She noted that involving cultural leaders in mediating land conflicts would ease the burden on courts, which are overwhelmed with backlogged cases that often take decades to resolve.

Queen mother of Iteso Juliet Among sharing a light moment with Minister of gender, Labour and Social Development, Betty Amongi as Emorimor looks on during her visit to Teso.

Amongi made these remarks on Wednesday while conducting cultural inspections of the Teso and Kumam cultural institutions.

She also urged cultural heads to pay closer attention to the behaviour of the youth, whom she said had become a source of unrest in many communities.

Meeting with the Kumam paramount chief, Raphael Otaya, and the Emorimor, Paul Sande Emolot, in Soroti, the minister expressed concern that Western cultural influences, often disconnected from traditional Ugandan norms, had infiltrated society under the watch of clan leaders.

“It’s also your mandate as cultural heads to know which values are imparted on a child, especially because the way children are brought up these days is completely very different from those days when we were children,” Amongi observed.

She further encouraged both cultural institutions to mobilise their subjects to embrace government initiatives such as the Parish Development Model (PDM), to which the government has allocated an additional sh1 trillion in the upcoming financial year, as well as the Emyooga programme.

Emolot commended the government for its continued support to cultural institutions and informed the minister of his plans to construct a sh56 billion palace.

Otaya, who leads the country’s youngest kingdom, established in 2023, pledged to prioritise clan-based conflict resolution over forwarding all matters to police.