The Coalition of Pastoral Civil Society Organisations (COPACSO) successfully conducted a participatory Training Needs Assessment (TNA) in the districts of Moroto and Kotido. This critical exercise was strategically designed to generate community-validated evidence to inform the design of future training programmes, legal clinics, and evidence-based advocacy initiatives. By directly engaging a diverse group of stakeholders, including community leaders, elders, women representatives, and local government officials, COPACSO aimed to strengthen legal protection, enhance communal land tenure security, and improve access to justice for pastoral communities.
COPACSO’s methodological approach was comprehensive, utilizing participatory learning through brainstorming, ranking exercises, and collective story harvesting to illustrate the lived realities of land governance challenges. A critical finding championed by COPACSO centered on the urgent need to address systemic threats to communal land, such as increasing land grabbing for mining and infrastructure development, as well as the adverse impacts of climate change on traditional grazing areas.
Participants achieved a clear consensus that current efforts to protect land rights are significantly constrained by limited technical knowledge, weak institutional capacity, and inadequate legal support among both community members and local governance structures. The dialogue successfully identified priority areas for capacity building, including the registration of communal land, the governance of Communal Land Associations (CLAs), and the development of mediation and advocacy skills.
A concrete and measurable outcome of COPACSO’s leadership was the prioritization of specific training needs that will form the basis of a comprehensive land governance curriculum. To guarantee the sustained impact of this intervention, COPACSO has committed to rolling out district-level training programmes and promoting greater participation of women, youth, and pastoral leaders in land governance processes.
Supported by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
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