How Property Rights Protect Widows and Orphans in Uganda
Religion & Liberty Online

How Property Rights Protect Widows and Orphans in Uganda

“In this part of the country, land is life,” says a young Ugandan woman. “Good dreams are about your land.” But widows and orphans are often denied access to their own land because of “property grabbing.”

As Jesse Rudy, the International Justice Mission Director in Uganda explains, property grabbing occurs when a man dies in Uganda and his relatives force the widow and her children off of their land, claiming it as ancestral “family land” disowning the widow from the man’s family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nLk3sBFk7I

International Justice Mission (IJM) is working to ensure that private property laws in Uganda are upheld and enforced. With the assistance of IJM, more than 650 widows and orphans have been able to recover their land.

As Kristie Eshelman says, “The work of IJM in Uganda is more example of how important well-enforced private property rights are to human prosperity – and how much we take them for granted in our own society.”

(Via: Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics)

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a senior writer for The Gospel Coalition, author of The Life and Faith Field Guide for Parents, the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible, and coauthor of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. He also serves as an associate pastor at McLean Bible Church in Arlington, Va.