Gulu University Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS) on January, Thursday,25th,2024 from Bomah Hotel in Gulu City launched the book ‘This Land is Not for Sale’ which was field research-based stories on land dynamic issues in the region recorded through a collaborative scholarly partnership involving both Gulu University and Academic Scholars from Denmark.
The book written with a creative and scholarly lens by over ten authors from both Gulu University and the Danish Universities, Copenhagen, and Aarhus team, brings vivid insights from the spectrum of land issues in Northern Uganda.
Gulu University Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Okello David Owiny who launched the book with the team of authors said the book needs to be translated into the Local Language (luo) so that its readership goes further.
Prof. Owiny said the research work was very strategic since everything in this world including minerals, water, trees, and grass is on Land.
“I feel the 1995 Constitution also still left many issues of land including unresolved matters of the lost counties including the rhetoric that when a person stays in a land for over 10 years become a bonafide occupant, this makes trusting people including your relatives on your land hard”. Prof.Owiny said.
He also appealed to the team to think about getting another grant to revisit their stories since the post-war Northern Uganda Land story keeps changing.
“Now we have balalo questions and many others that you need to interest yourself in”. Prof.Owiny added.
Komakech Henry Kilama, a long-practicing advocate of Court in the Post War Conflict Northern Uganda said there is a new phenomenon of land question where state agencies announce a place to be government land and after forcefully evicting people you later hear, they are mining minerals.
The book launch also brought in Academics, Local Community members, and traditional leaders who had participated in the data collection of the book.
The Launch was also part of the ‘Governing Transition in Northern Uganda: Trust and Land Project’ housed at IPPS with Dr. Stephen Langole as the Principal investigator and Sebastian Oswin Oguti as the Project Coordinator.
The Danida-funded four-year UGX 1.7 Billion project that started in 2013 with an extension up to 2017 was a research-based project that approached issues of governance and trust and mistrust by focusing on land governance.
The overall objective was to enhance research capacity and inform policy by creating knowledge and management of land disputes, trust, and governance in the post-war conflict transition.
The Project also sponsored to completion three persons for Doctors of Philosophy (PhDs) at the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies.
The Ph.D. holders through the project are, Dr Otto Ben Adol, Dr. Anying Irene Winnie, and Dr.Julaina.A. Obika who all had tailored research theses towards land management, and governance with prisms in legal, gendered, and traditional perspectives.
Download a free online copy of the book here https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MeinertThis
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