These are the stories of millions of people in our world today, from Tanzania to the Philippines to Mexico. Whether they live in cities or in rural areas, the majority of the world’s poor lives without legal rights to their property, in economic and social exclusion.

Exclusion is the rul;fair and equitable rule of law is the exception. As long as half the world’s poor lives outside recognized and enforceable laws, they will never know prosperity. 

Uganda: Crouch and Poach

Maryam Tusabe always found a way to support herself, from managing a hair salon to growing yams. In 1994, the mother of two adopted girls bought a plot of land in the Kampala district of Uganda. To purchase the plot, Maryam supplemented her savings with a six-month microfinance loan for 150 Ksh (US$ 70) at an interest rate of 50 percent. Gathered in a small one room house, witnesses watched as Maryam signed a handwritten sales agreement with a fingerprint, as stipulated under customary law. To transfer the document to a formally binding legal interest, Maryam would have had to pay $400 – an astronomical figure several times over what she made in one year.

Maryam Tusabe and her two children in their home in the Kampala district of Uganda.

Maryam used the plot to farm yams. To get extra income, she sold a 50 by 100 foot portion of the field to a neighboring family.  Once settled in, the neighbor slowly invaded more and more of Maryam’s land. Arguments followed until the neighbor denounced Maryam before a local council. Maryam appealed her case to the magistrate and then to the Uganda land tribunal, but given that her sale agreement was never legally registered, the case fell into judicial limbo.

Victoria Kirunda, FIDA Uganda, and Cate Ambrose, Legal Empowerment, examine Maryam's handwritten land contract.

Victoria Kirunda, a legal officer with Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA UGANDA), has taken on Maryam’s case and has been managing the court system on her behalf. FIDA Uganda is an affiliate of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, and works to promote legal awareness and defend the rights of women and children on matters like domestic relations and inheritance. 

A market similar to the one where Maryam sells her yams. Maryam is now forced to split her profits with a neighbor who stole her land and a bodyguard.

Maryam has lost much of the income she earned from the yams, and will not go into the field unaccompanied. She says she fears for her life, and pays a boy to accompany her to the field and back several times a week.

 

If Maryam’s land sale agreement were registered as a legal interest, she could clearly prove the boundaries of her property. But at $400, legal registration is out of her reach, and the sale agreement recognized under customary law has not protected her rights in the formal legal system

Uganda: Unlawful Eviction

Cissy Nakayiza bought a piece of land in the Bundumnaya Wakiso district outside of Kampala in 1999.  She used the land to cultivate bananas and maiz.  In 2005, the man who sold Cissy the land died, and his widow tried to buy out all the owners who had purchased plots from her deceased husband.
 

Cissy had a hand written letter of agreement which showed her right to the land. She could have used that letter to register the plot of land formally, but Cissy did not have the US$400 to do so.
 

Cissy Nakayiza's land contract was formally registered by a third party, who evicted Cissy and build a new house on the plot. Cissy has since moved back in with her parents and sibilings.

Without Cissy’s knowledge, the widow sold her property to a third party, who promptly evicted Cissy and build a new house on the land.

 
Cissy has tried to bring the case to the local courts, but because her title is a hand written piece of paper and due to an increasing number of forgeries, the magistrates are skeptical of the document’s legality. Cissy has been forced to move to her relatives’ home, where without the land to cultivate crops, she is both without a house and without a source of income.