By the Witness Radio team.

Safeguarding ancestral land often comes at the cost of heartbreak and loss. Across continents, those who stand against land grabbing and environmental destruction are met with violence, threats, and endless legal battles. In 2025, at least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed, with land disputes fueling more than half of these tragedies, Global Witness reports. Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers remain at the epicenter of this ongoing crisis.

The dangers reach far beyond physical harm. At times, the law itself becomes a weapon, recasting defenders of land and livelihoods as criminals in the eyes of the state.

Global Witness, a UK-based organization that investigates links between environmental destruction, conflict, corruption, and human rights abuses, describes criminalization as creating, amending, or reinterpreting laws to make previously legitimate activities illegal, or to increase the severity of penalties and sentences.

In northern Tanzania, these fears reignited when five Maasai men were arrested and detained in Ngorongoro. Indigenous communities now feel the pressure on their ancestral lands intensifying.

Nangei Meitaya, Salangat Makko, Ezekiel Kishau, Dickson, and Thadeus Clamian were taken into custody on the night of October 6 and held at Arusha Central Police Station before release the following night. According to the Oakland Institute, four of the men work for the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC), a local organization empowering Indigenous pastoralist women and girls in northern Tanzania.

Although the five men have been released, their ordeal shines a harsh light on the wider crisis confronting Maasai communities. Human rights groups point to a troubling pattern of arrests, intimidation, and restrictions that threaten access to land and essential services.

Joseph Moses Oleshangay, a Maasai human rights lawyer and activist from Ngorongoro District, described the detention as part of what he sees as a broader effort to intimidate community members.

“The abduction and subsequent detention of our community members is one of the many incidents of lawless targeting of the Maasai people in Ngorongoro – a deliberate campaign to instill fear and censorship, designed to make state dispossession and displacement easy,” Oleshangay said.

He added that when abductions become routine, it signals a complete breakdown of reason and compassion.

These arrests unfold against a backdrop of rising tension in northern Tanzania. The Oakland Institute notes that more than 30 community members have been detained in just two months, with thousands of livestock seized in nearby Loliondo.

The organization also reported that authorities barred the five men from seeing their families or legal counsel during detention. Meanwhile, officials allegedly searched the homes of other Pastoral Women’s Council staff without consent.

These incidents raise urgent questions about whether community organizations, human rights defenders, and local leaders can keep working safely as land and conservation disputes escalate.

The Oakland Institute argues that the mounting pressure on Maasai communities is part of a broader effort to diminish their presence in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and pave the way for expanded tourism and conservation projects.

Anuradha Mittal, the organization’s executive director, said the arrests should not be viewed as an isolated incident.

“Far from an isolated incident, this is a calculated campaign of intimidation. Driven by its goal to attract eight million safari tourists by 2030, the Tanzanian government is escalating pressure to evict the Maasai from their ancestral lands,” Mittal said.

She added that as conditions worsen across the region, some community leaders have once again been driven into hiding.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is celebrated as one of Tanzania’s crown jewels for conservation and tourism. Yet it remains the ancestral heartland of Maasai communities, whose traditions, way of life, and social bonds are woven into the very fabric of this land.

The region is celebrated worldwide for its ecological significance and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Mittal warned that international tourism is inseparable from the realities faced by the communities whose lands draw visitors. She urged those planning safari tours to Tanzania to recognize that tourism revenues are inadvertently fueling the government’s violent campaign against Maasai communities, whose ancestral lands are being taken in plain sight.

In August 2026, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), an independent expert body that monitors the implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, called on Tanzania to immediately halt the forced evictions of Maasai Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands in Ngorongoro and Loliondo.

The committee cited allegations of displacement, restrictions on access to land and natural resources, arbitrary arrests, intimidation and excessive use of force.

CERD also expressed alarm over reports that significant numbers of Maasai had been uprooted from their ancestral lands in the two areas in the name of conservation and tourism, without adequate and meaningful consultation or obtaining the communities’ free, prior and informed consent.

By the Witness Radio team.

“At times, I feel our oil is a curse. We blessed it, saying it is our oil. But today, they are not cooperating with us?” Gladys Birungi says.

Birungi, a community leader from Kasenyi village in Uganda’s oil-rich Albertine region, is challenging the grand promises that once drew the world’s gaze. For her, oil was meant to spark progress. Instead, she sees her community fighting to hold on to their land and future.

On a Witness Radio broadcast, Birungi likened land negotiations to marriage to show why communities deserve a voice in valuing their land before development takes it.

“If you admire my daughter, even if my family is poor, you have to bring the dowry I decide. Even if I am poor, I have prepared my daughter well. If you want to marry her, you should bring what I ask for. It is the same with land. If you want my land, you must pay an amount I consider fair,” she said.

She insisted that poverty must never diminish the worth of land or strip away the rights of those who depend on it.

“When government agencies came, they said the amount we asked for was too high because we were in a village. But this is my land. If it is too expensive, let them leave it,” she added.

For Birungi, the fight goes far beyond compensation. It is about whether those living in the shadow of major investments truly have a say in decisions that could transform their lives forever.

“We are not included in consultations, but when the consequences of oil production come, we will suffer. We could lose our lives, along with our children. Why is the government not thinking about us? We live near the industrial area and cannot sleep because of the noise.

Why are they silent about our suffering? Are they not thinking about us? Are we not Ugandans? Why are they leaving us to suffer?” she questioned.

Her questions echo a broader unease about Uganda’s investment boom across oil and gas, mining, infrastructure, forestry, and agribusiness. While these ventures promise jobs and growth, women from Kasenyi, Kassanda, and Makuutu urge us to count the true cost: land lost, livelihoods shattered, families strained, and futures clouded by uncertainty.

For women, the stakes are even higher. Land is more than wealth; it is the bedrock of food security and the survival of their families.

“If land is taken, we women shall be the ones to suffer tomorrow, not the men who are often invited to meetings,” Birungi said.

Birungi says she first learned in 2016 that her family’s land in Kasenyi village fell within an area earmarked for oil development. During a community meeting, she heard that aerial assessments had been conducted and that the area under consideration included her village.

As compensation talks began, she says community members proposed Shs20 million per acre. She recalls becoming angry when someone questioned whether land in a remote village could be worth that much.

She stood her ground, defending the land’s worth through the eyes of those whose lives are rooted in its soil.

“If you think my land looks bad on your side, leave it. If you admire my daughter and want to marry her, even though I am poor, I have prepared her well with what I have. You admired her, so you should bring what I want,” she recalls.

At another meeting, Birungi challenged a minister who said they would acquire their land at Shs1.5 million per acre. “I raised my hand before she finished speaking. I said, ‘No,’” Birungi recalls.

She recalls the mood turning tense when the defense minister warned the village could be wiped out in two minutes. With soldiers in the room, Birungi felt the words as a chilling threat.

“I was afraid,” she says, remembering how some residents slipped out of the meeting before it was over.

The next day, valuers arrived to assess land and crops. Residents questioned why the exercise was proceeding without their consent.

“They said, ‘This is a government project.’ We said it is a government project, but on our land, we need consent,” she adds.

Her story raises questions about how authorities communicate land takeovers, how they set compensation, and whether people feel safe pushing back against decisions that could alter their lives forever. Witness Radio has documented many cases where companies seize land by force, pushing aside the voices of those who call it home.

In Makuutu Sub-county, Bugweri District, community defender Josephine Mpindi describes a different investment that has left residents anxious about their land’s future.

Mpindi identifies the company involved as Rwenzori Rare Metals Limited, which is developing the Makuutu Rare Earth Project. She says physical mapping and sampling on community land began in 2021, with company representatives, sometimes accompanied by local leaders, visiting homes to seek access to land for sample collection.

According to Mpindi, many discussions involved men, leaving women with limited information about what was proposed and what the arrangements could mean for their land.

“They went to homes and met the men. Even community association meetings were held with men,” she said.

The Makuutu Rare Earth Project, which spans parts of Bugweri, Bugiri, Iganga and Mayuge districts, is being developed to extract rare earth elements from ionic adsorption clay deposits. These minerals are used in a range of modern technologies and industrial applications, making the project part of Uganda’s efforts to develop its mineral resources and participate in emerging critical-mineral supply chains. Rwenzori Rare Metals Limited is developing the project, with the Uganda National Mining Company participating as a state commercial partner.

The project has also attracted government support. When the government awarded a 21-year large-scale mining license to Rwenzori Rare Metals Limited, then Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa described the development as an opportunity to generate economic benefits for the country and the Busoga region.

“This large-scale mining license award represents the first step in developing one of the world’s heavy rare earth element assets,” Nankabirwa said.

She further argued that the project should be supported because its anticipated benefits would extend to local communities.

“This project should be supported all through because the outcome is going to support the country. It is going to benefit the people of Busoga because they will receive royalties, and they will be able to change their lives,” she said.

Yet Mpindi says beneath the promises of prosperity, many residents are left in the dark, unsure what the project will mean for their land, livelihoods, and future on the soil they depend on.

She notes that while payments were made for land access and sampling, residents often had little understanding of the long-term consequences hidden in these deals.

“People fear evictions because they don’t know what the company plans. There is a lot of tension. People have lost hope. They don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” she said.

On Witness Radio, Mpindi voiced worries about scars left after sampling. She claims open pits were abandoned across the land, endangering livestock and turning fertile fields into obstacles for farmers. ” If you go to Kigulamo, those pits are still there uncovered,” she said.

Mpindi says villagers have seen animals tumble into pits and families now struggle to grow crops on damaged earth. She believes the harm runs deeper than the land, adding burdens on those who rely on farming to survive.

In Kassanda District, community defender Olivia Nakasumba says a tree-growing investment by UK-domiciled New Forests Company continues to haunt families evicted from their land sixteen years ago. According to Nakasumba, hundreds of families have struggled to rebuild their lives since the evictions, with some still seeking compensation for the losses they say they suffered.

“Over 10,000 people were forcefully evicted without compensation. More than a decade later, people are still suffering. Others have died without receiving compensation,” she said. A curse for those who once owned the land, insisting that no promised benefit can erase the pain and hardship families have endured.

For the women defenders on the radio program, justice means more than just compensation. It demands recognition of the harm done, real solutions for those affected, and a promise that others will not suffer the same fate.

Despite hardships, these women refuse to stay silent. They organize, raise their voices, and demand accountability. In Kassanda, Nakasumba says the fight for justice is far from over. ” We were not able to resist the evictions because the government deployed in full force, but we are still alive to demand accountability for what belonged to us, the damage they caused, and the suffering we have gone through,” she said.

In Bugweri, Mpindi describes how women are taking matters into their own hands, banding together to share knowledge about land rights before decisions are made behind closed doors. Through meetings, savings groups, loudspeakers, and radio, they ensure everyone knows their rights and what is at stake.

Mpindi says their group, Makuutu Advocates Women’s Group, is also registered at the district level, giving women a platform to organize and raise their concerns collectively.

“We have held community meetings at different levels, in various parishes and villages, moving together as a team,” she said.

One of their greatest fears is signing away their rights without understanding the fine print. Mpindi says some documents are in unfamiliar languages, leaving people unable to understand what they agree to fully. Don’t sign anything without an interpreter. You should get a trustee you trust yourself to interpret for you and your husband what the agreement is saying,” she said. “

Mpindi’s message is not to reject all investment but to insist people understand what is offered, weigh the consequences, and have a real seat at the table regarding the land that feeds their families. ” To say no,” she added.

For Birungi, true investment starts with honest dialogue and respect for those whose land is at stake. She believes communities should not just be told what will happen, but given a real chance to understand, question, and shape their land’s future.

“The first thing they should have done is consult the community and obtain its consent. The affected person, or the person whose land they want to use, should first agree with what they are coming to do,” she said.

Birungi also calls on the government to help communities get independent legal advice before signing any deals. She points out that investors come armed with lawyers and experts, while ordinary landowners often lack the tools to understand or negotiate fair terms.

“Let the government give people lawyers to help us interpret documents before they start anything,” she said.

As Uganda advances with investments in oil, minerals, forestry, and more, these women insist their stories must be heard. They demand fairness, clear information, a real voice in decisions, and accountability when harm is done.

POKHARA, Nepal — Before Binita Bishwokaarma understood Nepal’s property laws, she understood the work required to sustain a farm.

Growing up in the village of Sindhupalchok, east of the capital, Kathmandu, she spent much of her time helping her mother around the house and in the fields while her father worked in the city. It’s a common scenario in Nepal, where gendered divisions of agricultural labor are widespread.

For Bishwokaarma, that meant she and her mother grew maize, potatoes, garlic and other vegetables. She participated in the entire agricultural cycle, from preparing fields and planting crops to harvesting them. She enjoyed plowing the most, but it was physically demanding because the family lacked modern machinery.

“We didn’t have tractors,” she said. “So, everything, start to ending, we had to do with our own hands. It was really hard.”

It’s what many women and girls experience. And yet, their prospects for owning the land they tend are slim: Despite gender equality under the law, in Nepal, property rights rest mostly with men.

Still, it’s women — accounting for nearly 70% of the country’s farming population — whom Bishwokaarma credits most with caring for the land. Throughout her childhood, she saw how dedicated women were to conserving their environment. She explained that many women learn from childhood how to keep the soil healthy and reduce pests naturally through mixed cropping, crop rotation and intercropping.

But these aren’t the only techniques women in Nepal use to take care of the land they use. Bishwokaarma said women use farmyard manure made from cow or buffalo dung, compost from kitchen waste and plant residues instead of chemical fertilizer. They even use natural pesticides made from neem leaves, garlic, chiles, ash, cow urine or local herbs to reduce insect damage. Around the fields, they plant flowers and local plants that attract bees, butterflies and other pollinators to help increase crop production as well.

To Bishwokaarma, women play a vital role in protecting land through agricultural practices.

“The men don’t know the exact process of farming,” she said. “Women dedicate their life to the land, and I have seen that my mother, aunts, my friends, were all experts in every agriculture process—yet all of the property, our house, our land, everything is in my father’s name.”

The imbalance Bishwokaarma describes extends well beyond her family.

The National Agricultural Census of 2021-22 found that just 20.8% of adult women involved in farming in Nepal have secure ownership rights to agricultural land, compared with 42.9% of men. Traditional gender-based divisions in agricultural work are also still common, although widespread male out-migration has forced a shift in these roles, often increasing the physical burden on women.

The inequalities in land tenure are not unique to Nepal, and they reflect a broader pattern that extends beyond the country’s borders.

Global gender imbalance

Across the Global South, women play a central role in agriculture while continuing to face unequal access to land and property rights. Globally, women account for less than 20% of landholders, and only 37% of countries guarantee equal land rights for women and men, according to U.N. figures.

Yet studies show that women’s access to secure land tenure is linked to higher agricultural productivity, lower food insecurity, reduced poverty and slower environmental degradation. A 2024 global evidence review by the nonprofit Landesa revealed growing evidence that secure land rights also help women adapt to climate change while supporting sustainable forest management and conservation.

George Washington University has reported similar findings. An international law and policy brief covering Ecuador, Mexico, Nepal and Peru stated that secure land ownership is associated with lower deforestation and more successful reforestation. In Uganda and Ethiopia, researchers found landholders with secure tenure were more likely to invest in soil conservation and climate resilience.

Plus, the benefits of land ownership go beyond individual women. “When women have access and rights to land, the economic benefits extend to their households and their communities,” the World Resources Institute reported, pointing to research showing women contribute more of their income to the household than men do, thereby improving education, health and food security for children.

Despite all this, land ownership remains dominated by men, even nonagricultural land. When it comes to Nepal, men are roughly twice as likely to own property, with only about 11% of women owning land overall.

“Even now, the modern law and Constitution give full rights to women, but it’s not implemented properly,” said Tanuja Pariyar, project coordinator in Pokhara, Kaski district, for the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO), an NGO dedicated to fighting caste- and gender-based discrimination.

Nepal has introduced a series of legal reforms over the past two decades to reduce gender disparities in land ownership. In 2002, the 11^th amendment to the civil code granted daughters a share of ancestral property by birth, but women still lost those rights upon marriage. That was changed in 2017, when legal gender-based discrimination in property inheritance was eliminated.

However, these legal reforms haven’t changed social norms that continue to shape who controls land and who benefits from it. By 2011, about 19% of households reported women owning land or property, but many women remained excluded from key decisions.

“For property decisions from taking a loan to selling something, most of the time the decisions are taken by the man,” Pariyar said.

Pariyar’s comment is bolstered by research that shows gender imbalances in decision-making powers within farming regions can harm not only women — but the community as a whole. “When women lack the tools, information and decision-making authority needed to implement adaptive strategies, the resilience of entire farming systems is compromised,” according to a 2025 study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

“Nepal is a patriarchal system because it’s a historical system,” Pariyar said. “This is a male-dominated society, and they don’t want to give power to women because they don’t trust it. That is the first issue.”

Patriarchal expectations

For women like Bishwokaarma, who is now a law student, those norms were learned early.

Although she worked closely with the land, she and many other women were taught from a young age that neither the family home nor the land belonged to them. Instead, all of the property belonged to the men in the family. Since she was raised in a patriarchal household where most major decisions were made by her father, she grew up surrounded by traditional beliefs and social norms that shaped expectations about ownership. Even though women are not legally barred from owning land today, these expectations often discouraged them from pursuing ownership.

As she grew older, Bishwokaarma began to see how those expectations affected her own mother. She said her mother often expressed frustration that despite years of laboring for the family, she remained dependent on her husband because she lacked property and financial security of her own that restricted her from making important financial decisions.

“It’s human nature because when you do lots of hard work and you never get appreciated for that work, obviously you get frustrated,” Bishwokaarma said. “That’s why she told me to get an education and become independent on my own.”

For advocates working on women’s rights in Nepal, that kind of independence begins with schooling.

Rabina G. Rasaily, FEDO executive director, says educating women is important when it comes to land ownership and its benefits. In her view, ownership is about more than legal rights. It can influence access to resources, decision-making power and economic security. Rasaily said that when women gain access to land, the benefits can positively affect future generations through improvements in health, an increase in educational opportunities and an increase in investments in homes and businesses.

These benefits also extend into conservation in Nepal. WRI research shows that in Banpale Community Forest, where women are guaranteed rights to the communal land, women have been inspired to actively participate in sustainable forestry and engage in climate adaptation training. These trainings include forest fire management, water conservation, landslide and soil erosion preventions and human-wildlife conflict avoidance strategies.

Understanding their rights

Realizing those benefits often depends on women understanding the rights available to them — yet many women do not, Rasaily said.

“There were some times when we’d have conversations and they would say, ‘Oh really? We can even own land, or property or a building?’” Rasaily said. “It’s beyond their thinking sometimes.”

However, the lack of individual ownership is not always viewed as a problem by women living within the system. For some, security comes through the family rather than personal ownership, which was the case for 28-year-old Mamta Kaushal.

Kaushal grew up with her two sisters and brother in the rural village of Tadapani in Nepal’s Annapurna region. She married at 18 and moved 50 kilometers (30 miles) to Pokhara city, to live on her husband’s property. The house and land where she now lives are ancestral property that have been passed down through generations. Although the property is not registered in her name, Kaushal said she doesn’t see it as a bad thing — she views it as a shared resource.

“It doesn’t matter, the name or register in which family member it is in,” she said. “Because we are in the same family.”

Kaushal works the family’s land. She grows plants like maize, wheat and potatoes throughout the seasons when the soil isn’t resting from the last crop and raises buffaloes on parts of their land. Kaushal sees her work as her duty to contribute to the family’s financial stability, provide food security to her family and keep the land productive through cultivation in order to preserve it for future generations.

For women who do want to acquire their own property, Kaushal expressed how access to property is less of a concern than it once was. She said she has not personally seen many women struggle to acquire property on their own because women can now earn income through wage labor or selling produce, textiles and clothing.

Kaushal also said women have greater opportunities to purchase land independently through a reduction in property registration fees the Nepal government offers for land registered in a woman’s name. Through this discount, women get 25-50% off fees associated with land purchases or transfers, rather than reducing annual property taxes. The rebate aims to empower women by incentivizing them to hold land ownership.

For Bishwokaarma, however, the issue is not whether women can own land, but whether they are encouraged and supported in doing so.

“Personally, I hope that more women in Nepal will not only have legal rights to property but will feel confident enough to claim and use those rights,” Bishwokaarma said. “I think education, legal awareness and economic opportunities are important in helping bridge the gap in land ownership.”

While Nepal’s laws have improved, Bishwokaarma said social attitudes and family practices must also change if women are to fully benefit from them. In her view, land ownership can provide security, promote independence and give women a stronger voice in family and community decisions.

“When a woman owns land or property, she often has more control over her future and has greater economic stability,” Bishwokaarma said.

Because of that, she said Nepal’s challenge is no longer expanding legal protections, but ensuring existing laws are effectively implemented and understood by the women they are intended to serve. Looking ahead, she said future governments should focus on increasing awareness of property rights, improving access to information and creating greater economic opportunities for women.

“If those areas are improved, the ownership gap may gradually become smaller,” Bishwokaarma said. “But I think social change is often slower than political change, so it may take time to see the full impact.”

Banner image: Women work in a paddy field at Uttarbahini village, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. Although many women work in agriculture, land ownership is largely held by men in Nepal. Image by AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha.

This story is published through a collaboration between Mongabay and the University of Montana’s School of Journalism. Students traveled to Nepal in May 2026 to report on wildlife, conservation and other environmental issues. You can read more about the program here.

Source: mongabay.com