Achieving Policy Coherence in Uganda 

Joseph Schechla, Coordinator, Housing and Land Rights Network – Habitat International Coalition and Technical Advisor – International Housing and Land Rights to Rooftops Canada and Shelter and Settlements Alternatives  

Ugandan civil society has demonstrated how to cooperate with various spheres of government to co-produce housing and land policy. To that end, Shelter and Settlements Alternatives (SSA) organized a technical workshop in Kampala, from 2 to 6 February 2026, with the support of Rooftops Canada and Global Affairs Canada (GAC), under the theme: “Public Policy Partnership: Realizing the Human Right to Adequate Housing in a Developing World.” 

SSA’s Executive Director, Dorothy Baziwe, and Project Manager, Brian Odella, hosted the four-day workshop attended by Ugandan legal practitioners, civil society representatives, and public servants. Participants explored Uganda’s related international and regional African Union (AU) human rights treaty obligations. This was followed by a review of Uganda’s relevant development commitments within the global 2030 Agenda and the AU’s development-and-decolonization Agenda 2063: “The Africa We Want.” 

The 4-day capability-development workshop took place within the Rooftops Canada-supported “Women’s Spaces” project, which operates in four African countries (Angola, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda), aligned with GAC’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. And women’s land and housing rights were a key focus. The workshop brought together international and pan-African perspectives, I presented the normative framework, and Ademofe Oye-Adeniran, Lawyer with the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, shared policy-engagement experiences and lessons in the Canadian context. 

One of the workshop’s practical objectives was to apply theory to actual practice and align these general lessons to Uganda’s specific context. To support this, Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development’s Human Settlements Commissioner, Khayangayanga Dave, presented Uganda’s housing and land rights legal and policy context. SSA’s Peter Kasaija, also showcased the organisation’s own progress in legal and policy advocacy.  

Relating to the participant’s common-but-differentiated functions, the workshop culminated with the participants co-producing professional policy briefs focused on their self-determined problem-solving housing and land rights priorities in the country. 

The Women’s Spaces project, with such activities as this, builds women’s and men’s common knowledge and skills (capabilities) vital to achieve equitable and sustainable access to, use of, and control over land. When grounded in the associated human rights, they not only operationalize the normative framework for such efforts, but also develop the fit-for-purpose tools we all need to sustain coherent social, economic, and environmental functions of land. In their broadest function, these tools are the instruments of statecraft that uphold civic peace and ensure meaningful participation of a policy’s ultimate subjects. Such a pragmatic human rights approach, thus, contributes to the development-state system and a more coherent world order.  

In these four days, government and civil society partners developed knowledge and a common language that promise to enhance mutual understanding across the seeming policy divide.  

For me, the most impactful learning moments were in the participants’ feedback, indicating a high degree of receptivity to the material prepared for them. They absorbed new concepts and seemed to grasp the practical nature of the human rights principles and obligations. The most meaningful—and, hence, impactful—lesson may have been the introductory session, which framed housing and land rights as practical tools for maintaining system coherence and preventing injustice, deprivation, and violence. The multiplier effect of that approach can be seen in its applications to other fields of public life and human needs. 

In this experience, I observed that it seems that the public servants, could then see their own human rights obligations as tools of their profession, beyond moralizing language expressed in rules imposed by remote authorities. It was encouraging to witness such cooperation between government officials and conscientious citizens, showing that a better world is possible.