Jesse Rudy: Widows, Orphans, and Land Theft in Uganda

This week on 20 Minute Takes, Nikki talks with Jesse Rudy. Trained as an attorney, Jesse is the Founder and CEO of Redeem International, a Christian faith-based nonprofit that protects some of the world's most vulnerable widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation. They talk about the phenomenon of land theft in Uganda, its effects on women and children, and how their organization's deterrence strategy has broad societal effects throughout the country. Jesse also shares his reflections on the type of spiritual formation necessary for engaging in justice work.

You can learn more about Redeem International's work at their LinkedIn page and their website.  

20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action
Host and Producer: Nikki Toyama-Szeto 
Edited by: David de Leon
Music: Andre Henry

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hello, this is Nikki Toyama-Szeto. I'm the Executive Director of Christians for Social Action, and your host for today's episode of 20 Minute Takes. On this episode, I talk with Jesse Rudy, the founder and CEO of Redeem International. Redeem is an organization that works with and on behalf of widows and orphans in Uganda, we talk about the importance of land and the strategic opportunity that deterrence makes in its ability to protect a broader society. Join us for this conversation.

Jesse Rudy, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of 20 minute takes.

[00:00:57] Jesse Rudy: Well, thanks, Nikki. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:00:59] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Absolutely. I was really excited to have you on the podcast because one of the things, you know, I feel like in Christian circles and Christian justice circles, there's, you know, phrases tossed around about, Oh, you know, "Defend the widows, defend the orphans."

And people always sort of like spiritualized that like, Oh, you know, like the spiritually widowed, but you, at Redeem International, actually defend orphans and widows. Is that right?

[00:01:28] Jesse Rudy: That is right. That is exactly what we do. Our mission is to protect widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation.

[00:01:35] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I mean, I, so it gives me goosebumps, because I just feel like, oh, there's so many simple things in the Bible that we can just act on, so you're like leading the way in that. Now tell me a little bit about the particular work that you do with widows and orphans, specifically the land work that you're doing.

[00:01:52] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, well, it's funny that you were talking about where you see it in the Scriptures, because it is one of those things in Scripture that's so amazing, is that things can be both a metaphor and also a reality.

[00:02:02] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes. Yes.

[00:02:06] Jesse Rudy: and orphans all through the scriptures, it is, it is both a metaphor, it's a parable but it also is, and has always been a reality that widows and orphans are uniquely vulnerable.

And so, yeah, our mission is to protect widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation. And the way that we do that is that we protect widows and orphans from land theft. And that's not something that many people in probably this audience have heard of before. Usually when I bring it up, people look at me like I've got three heads.

But what we found was that if you are a woman in rural Uganda, and if you lose your husband your odds are one in three that violent criminals will come to you. And drive you out of the home that you and your children live in, so that they can steal the land that you and your children depend on for your survival.

[00:03:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: 33%.

[00:03:01] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, yeah, one in three.

[00:03:03] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow. Okay.

[00:03:04] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, and to get you out of that home they will do every horrible thing that a man can do to a woman. We have cases where crops have been destroyed, where livestock has been slaughtered where homes have been set on fire, children raped. We're actually doing two murder cases right now where we represent a collection of orphans where their widowed mother mothers were hacked to death with machetes over the home that they lived in.

[00:03:33] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So, I mean, I feel like from the North American context, this still feels like what is the dynamic that we need to understand about land or the role of land, or what is different in the U S Canadian context that makes it so that this is not something we're very familiar with this dynamic of people coming in and taking land.

[00:03:54] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, I think the first thing you have to understand about land is that in, in the developing world and across Africa and Uganda specifically, land is life.

[00:04:04] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Huh.

[00:04:05] Jesse Rudy: Like land is a family's primary source of food. income, shelter, security, savings, the only possibility of wealth transfer. It is a woman's connection to the community and her social standing if she owns land.

Unfortunately, it's also a highly coveted asset, and so it attracts the attention of violent criminals. And not withstanding the fact that there are laws on the books. that make this a crime to steal land from a widow. Those laws are just not being enforced. And so the real difference between the U.

S. and Canada and rural Uganda is here we have an expectation that the law would be enforced. That if somebody came into your home right now with a machete or a torch and tried to drive you out, you know that the police would respond. You know that they would be held accountable. And you know that you'd be restored your land.

And our clients don't know that.

[00:05:04] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow.

[00:05:06] Jesse Rudy: They in fact know the opposite.

[00:05:09] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: The folks who are stealing land from widows and children, why are they stealing land? Like I understand how holistically important it is for this this woman and maybe her children. You're talking about, it's the kind of their bank and their job and their grocery store and all of these things, social standing.

But if somebody already has land in Uganda, in this community, why are they stealing someone else's land?

[00:05:38] Jesse Rudy: Yeah. And. It depends on the perpetrator and it varies a little bit from area to area in the country. But at the end of the day, people do it for profit. And so the more land you own, the more money you can make, and also the more social standing you have in the community. The biggest landowner is the biggest man in the community.

And he's the most profitable man in the community. And so. In some places, the perpetrator is often an in law a relative of the deceased who sees an opportunity to enlarge their possession, to have land to distribute to their children and so they'll push the widow and her family off.

In other parts of the country, it's more, it's more like clan warfare when the patriarch of one clan dies. The patriarch of the neighboring clan sees an opportunity and he'll push that entire clan off of the land.

[00:06:34] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I see. Okay. That.

[00:06:36] Jesse Rudy: And sometimes it's just straight up crime of opportunity. The government's going to put a road through a certain place.

And so we know land, land prices are going to rise. And so they will look for the most vulnerable, and that is typically the widow or the orphan.

[00:06:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So, okay. So there's good laws. Is it fair to say there's good laws on the books? 

[00:06:55] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, in Uganda, the law is actually quite clear. There are three different acts in Uganda that criminalize stealing land from a widow. And also it's, you know, also a crime to murder someone or assault someone or rape someone or burn their house down. Like, all of those things are clear, clearly defined crimes under the Uganda legal code.

[00:07:13] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So what makes it so effective fighting for land rights in the Ugandan context? Cause I, I think that's really interesting that you're really looking at the welfare of widows and orphans as a whole, but you're going specifically after this land rights

[00:07:28] Jesse Rudy: Yes, and the way that we do that is we, we deploy teams of local justice professionals to intervene directly on those victims behalf.

[00:07:39] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: It's like lawyers sort of investigators? 

[00:07:42] Jesse Rudy: Ugandan attorneys, Ugandan investigators, Ugandan social workers, community relations, security. We deploy those teams to specific locations to partner with local law enforcement in individual cases.

Our goal is to restore those victims to their home, to arrest and prosecute the men that stole the land. And to rehabilitate the surviving families so that they can actually flourish. And then the last part is the part that kind of gets to your question is and then we try to amplify and broadcast that, the results of those cases as a warning to anybody that would consider stealing land from a widow.

And the reason we focus on, well there are two reasons we focus on individual cases. First, these women and children matter. They, they matter to God and so they should matter to us. And so we want to focus on their individual cases and make sure that they're safe. But the other reason we focus on individual cases is because we believe that law enforcement leads to deterrence, deterrence leads to safety, and safety leads to prosperity. At the end of the day, land theft is an economically motivated crime. People steal land from widows because they can make a lot of money, and because in an environment where no one's enforcing the law, there's zero risk of accountability. And when you have an economically motivated crime, and you have high profitability and low risk, you're going to see high abuse rates.

And what our work does is it changes that risk reward calculation for the would be land thief. Every time we put a family back in their home and broadcast that result to the community, those who would steal land look at it and say, "Oh, this isn't nearly as profitable as I thought it was. I'm not going to get to keep the land. I'm not going to get the profit from the land because it's going to go back to her." And every time we work with the police and a prosecutor to secure an arrest, to secure charges, to secure a conviction, a sentence and broadcast that to the community we send a message to them that, "Oh, this actually wasn't as safe as I thought it was. I thought it was easy to steal land from a widow. And now I'm at risk if I do it." And at the end of the day, it's like a business, right? People get into business because it's high profits and there's low risk of downside. We maximize downside and minimize upside for land thieves. And what we see is that when we do that behavior changes.

[00:09:59] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow.

[00:10:00] Jesse Rudy: It changes dramatically.

[00:10:01] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah. 

[00:10:01] Jesse Rudy: I used to work, as you know, at an organization called International Justice Mission. And we actually ran when I was at IJM we ran the pilot that ultimately became Redeem. And in that pilot program the team put about a thousand widows and orphans back in their home. They worked on the securing the arrest and prosecution of about a hundred violent criminals.

And over the lifetime of that program, they saw land theft rates drop by 80%,

[00:10:30] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow.

[00:10:31] Jesse Rudy: which meant that there were tens of thousands of women and children that we never met because they never reported a case because they actually never were abused in the first place.

[00:10:41] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So that's the thing that I find so extraordinary because that 80 percent reduction are people who may have been a victim of this particular violent, terrible crime who are actually not. So,

[00:10:57] Jesse Rudy: The only thing better than being restored to your land is actually just never losing your land in the first place.

[00:11:03] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So, and that kind of effectiveness rate to me, like, you used the word deterrence. So, I guess the way I'm thinking about it is at my kiddo's middle school, If the bikes are left unlocked, it's a, it's a crime of opportunity. Another kid jumps on it, rides around it, goes seven 11, leaves it there.

Right. But if a, if a bike is unlocked and then someone takes it and the consequences of having stolen a bike are broadcast, the next time a middle schooler walks by and sees an unlocked bike, they go, Oh. That's not going to be fun anymore. Right? I'm not going to get my joy right out of it. I'm actually, I might get in a ton of trouble.

So they just keep walking on by and that's the dynamic that we're seeing on a society- wide level. And it's not just bikes, but it's violence against vulnerable women and children and their livelihoods, their status, their social status, this holistic thing that's actually being protected.

[00:12:00] Jesse Rudy: Yes.

[00:12:01] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I think that's so extraordinary and, and you mentioned it's because it's an economic crime.

We don't see these kinds of deterrence numbers. We see good deterrence numbers for some of these other things. Can you tell me what it is about these economic crimes that make this particular way of intervening so, so like the effect of it is so magnified as opposed to, I think some of the difficulty when there's like sex trafficking or other forms of exploitation?

Are there any things that you've sort of noticed?

[00:12:36] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, so when I was, my last role when I was at IJM was I was actually on the, their global leadership team and I got the chance to kind of look across the entire landscape of all of the, all of the work that we were doing. And when I looked at the crime types that we were addressing, you could kind of put them into two buckets.

On the one hand, there were economically motivated crimes like we've been talking about. And then on the other hand, there were crimes of what I call passion and perversion.

[00:13:02] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay.

[00:13:03] Jesse Rudy: And when you look at the motivation for the criminal in those different categories of cases, it's, it's just different, right? When you're engaging in an economically motivated crime, your, your motive is profit.

And that's a, that's a rational thing. I can, I can calculate it. Crimes of passion perversion are not that way. They're, they're because I lack self control or I, I couldn't resist the urge or I lost my temper or so spousal abuse. Child sexual assault. Those perpetrators are not being rational when they engage in that.

They may try to avoid risk to a certain degree, but they're not being rational. The person who steals land from a widow, or the person who enslaves another, or the person—sex trafficking is really interesting because I think there's a difference between supply side and demand side. On the demand side, It's a crime of passion and perversion.

[00:13:57] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes.

[00:13:58] Jesse Rudy: On the supply side, it's wholly economic.

[00:14:01] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow, okay.

[00:14:02] Jesse Rudy: It's an economic crime, it's not complicated. It's just math. Like it's, it's actually just an equation.

[00:14:08] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes, return, 

[00:14:10] Jesse Rudy: If the profit exceeds the risk, they're going to engage. And if you can flip that so that the profit no longer exceeds the risk, they're not going to engage.

And so when we started Redeem, we wanted to leverage that learning. to be able to maximize the number of widows and orphans that we could protect.

[00:14:27] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That's amazing. That's, it's amazing. I, I I really appreciate the way that you all show up in, you know, in the work and in the communities, are there any reflections that you have or lessons learned that you know, four or five years into the work that as you look back and say, ah, this is something we do now, or something we've learned now that if I were to start again, it's something I would incorporate in a different way, or I would add this thing.

[00:14:54] Jesse Rudy: Well, the first lesson I would say is don't start a non profit on the eve of a global pandemic.

[00:15:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Am I remembering correctly? It's like February, 2020?

[00:15:03] Jesse Rudy: Yeah, February.

[00:15:04] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Super great lesson learned. Okay.

[00:15:06] Jesse Rudy: February 2020 was beautiful. March 2020 was less beautiful.

[00:15:10] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Jesse Rudy: But we managed to get through that. But I think one of the biggest lessons, and it ties back to this deterrence, I get to be a little bit of a broken record around deterrence is, is making sure that your intervention is focused on the incentives of those that you're trying to influence.

So, when I first started working on the pilot at IJM, we were doing, we were working to affect the same crime, which was land theft from widows and orphans. And our primary strategy was to mediate cases between the victim and the perpetrator, essentially to bring them in a room and agree. And our goal was to put as many women and children back in their homes as possible.

And the fastest way to put women and children back in their homes, an immediate first strategy is to "split the baby." And so what would happen is we would go into the place and we would, a man would have stolen, let's say, two acres from a widow. And we would go in and we would have a meeting with the head of the clan, local political leaders, maybe even local religious leaders.

We would hold a mediation. And at the end of it, he would get to keep one acre and she would get to keep an acre and she would get to have a home. And that was great for her because she having a home is better than not having a home. And so we'd have ice cream and we'd celebrate and it was all wonderful.

But as we were doing that and we'd put, you know, I think a couple of hundred people back in their homes that year, I started. I started having my doubts about it. And I ended up having this a Jerry Maguire moment. I was on a plane, I was flying back for a conference in the U.S. And, and this was just eating at me that, that we were helping our clients, but I think we were actually hurting other widows an orphans because we were, we were endorsing it.

We were telling the community, if you steal land from a widow, you're going to have to go through a mediation process and you're going to have to give some of it back, but at the end of the day, you're going to profit. And there's no downside. And, and so I wrote a memo on the airplane that it was entitled.

"I want to blow it all up." We had just had our best year. And I was like, "Yes, we are helping our clients and that is wonderful. But what we're actually doing is we're helping to incentivize future people to steal this and we're actually blessing it." There are documents out there with the stamp of our organization on them that say, "We agree that you can have half of her land."

And it was a risk for, for the organization to say, "Yeah, we're, we don't know if a prosecute first strategy is going to work but we're willing to let you blow it all up." And we, we blew it all up. And within a year and a half, we had the same numbers of victims that were being restored to their land as we had previously, and we were creating this monumental deterrent impact that was providing protection to tens of thousands of people that we never even met.

[00:18:12] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love that. That I, I think it's, it's so powerful. I love the personal, but also the systemic posture of it. As a person of faith, as a Christian, how has this interacted with your faith?

[00:18:26] Jesse Rudy: Well, I can give you the, the public answer and the private answer. The private answer is that it's challenged my faith quite a bit over time. The way that I've described it to friends and family is that when you draw close to dark things like this it doesn't always pull up Jesus.

[00:18:45] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hmm.

[00:18:47] Jesse Rudy: and it pulls up some of the dark things from, from the bottom of your soul. And one of the things we did at IJM that we do at Redeem is we spend time in prayer and in practices of spiritual formation, drawing us back to Jesus, because without it, what I find is that I can actually just come to hate those people that steal land from widows and orphans, and I want them in a cage.

And today I still want them in a cage. Like I want them to be held accountable for the things that they, they do. But I have to work every day to make sure that I remember that they actually are made in the image of God as well. And that God loves them every bit as much as he loves my client.

And I'm called to do the same, even while I'm holding them accountable, even while I'm making sure that they are feeling things that they don't want to feel I still have to have to love them. And I would say in doing this since 2009, it has pulled up some dark things from the bottom of my soul that Jesus has been able to kind of screed off the top. And hopefully. make me a little more like Jesus over time. There have been times that I've probably been less like Jesus. But it is challenging. It also has helped me—and this is the more public answer— but it has also helped me to see God. At Redeem, one of the things we always say is that we serve a God of redemption who is at work in the world redeeming everything that has been lost, broken, stolen, and destroyed, and at the same time calling us to serve as agents of redemption in a hurting world.

And I think the widow and the orphan is found all through scripture because it is a reality, but also because it is an amazing parable of God's redemptive purpose, God's redemptive character, and God's redemptive work in the world. And so I feel like every time I get to stand right nose to nose with one of these cases and walk through the cycle of this beautiful family that was protecting and providing for each other that was ripped apart by death and then exploited by sin and then watching the people of God be the hands and feet of God to do the work, to make the sacrifice, to restore that woman and child to the life of protection and provision that she was created to enjoy. I get to see God. And so people ask us like, are we a Christian organization or are we sharing the gospel?

And I just say "Yeah, this, that actually is the gospel."

[00:21:22] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah.

[00:21:23] Jesse Rudy: That we serve a God that created something wonderful that has been lost, broken, stolen, and destroyed, and is doing the work to redeem it. And we are telling that parable over and over and over again, and anybody who has ears to hear and eyes to see will see it.

And so I just, I just think I get to have the greatest job ever because I get to see that story over and over and over again.

[00:21:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Jesse, thank you so much for joining us, for sharing your story. And thanks to the team at Redeem International, just really encouraged by the way that you all are standing witness to God's work and bearing witness to, to God's character in Uganda to these women and children. Thank you so much.

[00:22:09] Jesse Rudy: Well, thanks for having us. We really, really do appreciate it. And just excited to be able to have more people know that this is a reality. It's not just something in history. It's something that's happening now and it's something that the church can do something about.

[00:22:26] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I see you in

I really appreciated hearing from Jesse and the team at Redeem International. If you're interested in their work, I encourage you to check out their website at RedeemInternational.org to learn more about what it is that they're doing and perhaps ways that you can get involved. 

20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action.

We're produced and edited by David de Leon. I'm your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and the music is done by Andre Henry. You can find us on the web at ChristiansForSocialAction. org. Give us five stars, write a review, and share about the podcast with your friends.