Lake Victoria supports one of the world’s largest freshwater fisheries and sustains thousands of livelihoods across Uganda. At Masese Landing Site near Jinja, access to lakeshore land is essential to fishing communities, providing a place to live, fish, trade and connect to regional markets.
But for dozens of families, longstanding customary rights to this land came under threat.
As local authorities pursued the redevelopment of fish markets and landing sites, commercial interests and local officials challenged customary claims to valuable lakeshore land. More than 50 households faced eviction, with several land parcels neither formally registered nor titled despite families having occupied them for decades.
The experience at Masese reflects a wider land governance challenge in Uganda. According to a 2024 Afrobarometer study, almost one in four Ugandans said someone in their household had been involved in a land dispute during the previous five years. Among those affected, 22 per cent reported land grabbing and the same proportion land fraud.
With funding from Sweden, IDLO works with legal aid providers in Uganda to help vulnerable communities understand and exercise their land rights and access justice. At Masese, IDLO supported the Uganda Law Society (ULS) legal aid clinic in Jinja to provide community members with free legal advice and representation and strengthen their understanding of formal and customary land rights.
For seven community members, this support proved critical when a dispute over their land reached the Chief Magistrate’s Court.
“They were the customary occupants of lakeshore land since the 1980s,” said Diana Sanyu of ULS, who led their legal defence. “A wealthy fisherman fraudulently obtained the certificate of title to the land and petitioned for my clients’ eviction.”
With IDLO-supported legal aid, the claimants successfully overturned their eviction orders, returned with their families to their customary land and were awarded compensation by the court.
IDLO also supports accessible ways of resolving land disputes beyond the formal courts. Where court proceedings were slow and costly, community elders helped resolve disputes through more accessible customary mechanisms, particularly when litigation was prolonged by repeated appeals.
The impact extended beyond individual cases. Some community members who had faced eviction became community organizers themselves, helping neighbours file joint land claims and seek accountability from public authorities. In doing so, legal empowerment helped communities become better equipped to protect their land rights and engage with the institutions responsible for governing land and natural resources.
“At Masese, access to justice meant much more than winning a case,” said Barbara Kilei, IDLO’s Uganda Country Manager. “It meant families could return to their land, continue fishing and trading, and rebuild a sense of security. This is why legal aid matters: it helps make the rule of law real for people who might otherwise be excluded from justice, and it supports more peaceful, fair, and sustainable development.”
The experience at Masese shows how stronger land governance and access to justice can protect both rights and livelihoods. By supporting legal aid, strengthening awareness of formal and customary land rights, and promoting accessible dispute resolution, IDLO is helping communities challenge land grabbing and unlawful eviction and protect the land and natural resources on which they depend.
This work forms part of IDLO’s broader support for access to justice in Uganda. In 2024–2025, IDLO-supported legal aid providers, including ULS and Justice Centres Uganda, provided direct legal assistance to 17,199 vulnerable people and reached 167,199 people through community outreach — helping translate legal rights into tangible protection for people, their land and their livelihoods.