People in motion: an entitlements approach to Karimojong agro-pastoralism

This paper describes and analyses people’s security of access to means of production among the Karimojong herd-owners who inhabit the North-Eastern districts of Uganda. It claims that Ugandan statutory land management policy and law undermines the customary tenure system, thereby threatening access security for Karimojong agro-pastoralists. The paper intends to gain insight in the customary tenure system of Karamoja in order to contribute to the appreciation and formal recognition of this system by government authorities.The paper finds that the customary tenure system has four main principles, and proposes recommendations for each one of them:<B>Pastoral mobility</B>: optimal mobility is required to provide access to scarce and unevenly spread natural resources:disarmament: the state military should continue to collect weapons, track down raiders and bring them to justice in order to restore peace and security in Karamojaprotected areas: restricting animal grazing inside protected areas should be avoided because grazing movements in these areas are of tremendous importance in the pastoral cyclemining: local populations should be consulted every time environmental prospecting licenses are allocated, so they can prevent potentially disruptive activitiesthe Land Act: alternative arrangements for land property should be set, as the Land Act cannot represent the nature of customary ownership of pastoral grazing lands<B>Separating and spreading villages</B>: villages have to separate and spread over the tribal territory in order to allow its members to obtain enough good quality lands around the village:relocation of villages could bring a solution to many of the problems the congested towns of the district face<B>Diversifying lands</B>: the family land domain in the area ideally consists of several small—one to three acres—plots of land:the Land Act should avoid fixing land ownership in the hands of one owner only, which would regress the rights actual users built up over time<B>Non-alienation of land</B>: the principle of non-alienation is apparent in all forms of natural resource use in the district, although this principle is not very obvious because tribal and sectional geographic boundaries are so vague:to protect community interests the best way forward is to legalise properties through certification of agricultural lands, woodlands, pastures and water resourcesconsideration should be paid to the fact that insecurity of access does not hit equally hard on every Karimojong individual, family or village: poor families often lack the social and material assets to benefit from their access rights in terms of actual crop production and animal grazing[adapted from author]