GENDER & RIGHTS
Women’s Rights Now
Supporting refugee women at Imvepi understand, claim and defend their rights to the land they live and depend on, whilst bolstering economic security and business.
The challenge
In the Imvepi Refugee Settlement, in Uganda’s northern Terego District, land is life — and for many refugee women, it was insecure. Through conversations with residents, a pattern emerged: people misled by rental and land-ownership agreements they had never been able to read, unexpected hikes in rent, evictions served without warning, and — in the most troubling cases — disputes escalating into gender-based violence. Furthermore, these problems were compounded by a lack of financial security, job opportunities and financial literacy.
Behind many stories was the same root: a gap in knowledge, and no safe way to claim rights people did not know they had, and a lack of financial support to start income generating activities, pay for school fees and utilities.
What we did
Working alongside the community — not for it — we used Creative Action to bring the issue into the open and build the response together. Through forum theatre, women performed the problems they faced 27 times across 6 villages, to their neighbours, and the community stepped in to name the causes and imagine the solutions. Through dialogue and creative exploration, they reached their own understanding of what was really driving the insecurity.
From there, the community built its answer. Partnering with paralegal experts, we trained women from within the settlement as community paralegals — equipped to understand contractual rights, run legal clinics for their neighbours, foster pathways to needed services and stand up in public forums to demand change from local leaders. And because the process surfaced deep economic insecurity, it also seeded Village Savings and Loan groups, giving women a route to independence and income and eventually start up micro-businesses.
“The knowledge stays in the community — carried by us and other women, long after this project ends.”
