With support from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, COPACSO co-organized National Land Awareness Week 2026, facilitating staff participation, backing a member organization, and deploying five lawyers to deliver free legal aid across the Rwenzori region.
Land is central to the identity, culture, and livelihoods of pastoralist communities, who depend on secure access to communal grazing areas, water resources, and livestock routes. However, pastoralists face persistent challenges, including insecure land tenure, land fragmentation, encroachment, and competing conservation interests.
Operating across 10 districts and four sub-counties per district, this national awareness initiative brought together civil society organizations, government institutions, and land actors. Field teams held pre-meetings with sub-county officials to clear mismatched information before hosting public community dialogues and radio broadcasts.
COPACSO’s legal deployment directly supported shared event targets of reaching at least 5,000 community members and providing direct legal aid to at least 1,200 individuals.
Outreach prioritized marginalized populations, championing the land ownership and inheritance rights of women and persons with disabilities. Addressing systemic judicial gaps like court delays, bribery, and double titles, sessions with the Resident Judge encouraged communities to embrace Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) for customary land disputes.
The campaign yielded concrete outcomes, including joint regional council resolutions and the registration of over 1,000 family lands under customary and freehold tenure.
Moving forward, COPACSO continues to advocate for the formal registration of pastoralist communal lands to guarantee secure tenure, resolve disputes, and drive long-term economic transformation.
