Resumen de Land tenure as a cause of tensions and driver of conflict among mining communities in Karamoja, Uganda: Is secure property rights a solution?
This paper offers insight on the missed narrative of land and resource conflict beneath the reality of gemstones and ores in the inchoate industry of limestone, marble and gold mining by communities in Karamoja – Uganda. Land tenure is often overlooked as a cause of tension or driver of conflicts especially in the design of responses to conflict situations in mining areas. Land tenure is considered to be an intricate, historical and perplexing factor in conflict, and the response to its manifestation is often limited to the formalization of land rights. This paper describes the forms of land tenure induced conflicts in mining communities. It articulates the need to address such land-resource conflicts by applying responses based on property rights recognition to that capture the full bundle of rights especially on customary land and improve the leverage of communities in claiming benefits from mining actions. The paper is arranged in six sections; a short introduction, background, and methods, women in mining, description of conflicts due to land-resource tenure and property rights recognition as a response to conflict. It concludes that property rights are essential in supporting claims to entitlement and benefits for communities, as they improve the bargaining power of communities while avoiding the coalescing ability of land grievances in driving mining communities into conflict. Under customary-communal tenure, surface rights are well defined but rarely are sub-surface rights. Legal and formal instruments to guarantee economic value and costs, transmitted in compensation payments, royalty fees and in benefits to communities are necessary to lessen the frictions about quantifications and measures.
