The indicator monitors legal reforms that give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land. This indicator proposes that progress towards the SDG target will be determined by the extent to which countries have incorporated into their legal framework the following 6 proxies based on internationally recognized standards, particularly from Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) and the International Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW):
- Mandatory joint registration, or economic incentives for joint registration.
- Spouse or partner consent for land transactions.
- Equal rights for sons and daughters to inherit and for surviving spouse to receive an inheritance share.
- Budgetary commitments to strengthen equal rights for women regarding ownership and/or control of land.
- If customary land tenure is recognized in the legal and policy framework, women’s land rights are protected.
- Quotas for women's participation in land administration and management institutions.
News and Blogs
Over the past year, during my work in western Uganda, I have had the opportunity to get to know Paolyel Onencan. Paolyel is the Executive Director of Buliisa Initiative for Rural Development Organisation (BIRUDO). Paolyel and his BIRUDO colleagues are doing good work around Uganda’s oil and gas development in the Albertine Graben, by helping families get better deals on compensation from the oil companies (Total and China National Offshore Oil Company) working in the region.
The ‘age of ignorance’
For a long time land governance, land tenure and land rights remained in the ‘age of ignorance’. We have known for some time that land governance is a key ingredient for social, economic and environmental development; what was missing, however, was the data. With the little information available to us at the time, we set priorities and crafted interventions for our course of work. Relying on a few rough figures meant that we were often repeating mantras and slogans based on loose, rather than on hard and reliable facts. Most notable among these was the often repeated and now widely disputed, “women own 2% of the world’s land”.
Across the globe, indigenous and rural women make invaluable contributions to their communities and toward global sustainable development and climate goals. They use, manage, and conserve the community territories that comprise over 50 percent of the world’s land and support up to 2.5 billion people.
By Chris Hufstader
After an audacious land grab by a foreign company, indigenous women in a remote Cambodian village struggle to regain their farms and sacred sites.
Sol Preng remembers vividly the day in 2012 when bulldozers unexpectedly arrived on her family farm.
“The company came and cleared away our cashew trees right before the harvest,” she says. “I lost four hectares of land and all my cashew trees.”
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Library Resources
Steps, pillars, and replication tips for Espaço Feminista’s women-led local model to design, implement and monitor land-related processes and policies.
Background paper on Resilience for Sustainable Development in the Lake Chad Basin
The humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) is among the most severe in the world, with more than 10 million people in urgent need of life-saving assistance and protection. As the crisis enters its ninth year, attacks by non-state armed groups remain frequent, and the violent conflict continues to fuel large-scale human suffering, including massive violations of human rights, especially for women and girls, who are often victims of abuse and sexual violence. Communities and individuals in the LCB, especially women, are accustomed to shocks and
Information note on SDG Indicator 5.a.2
Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) "Achieve gender equality and empoer all women and girls" regonizes the fundamental role of women in achieving poverty reduction, food security and nutrition. Target 5.a aims to "undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws".
The present publication provides national statistical agencies and policy makers with guidance on collecting, processing, analysing and disseminating individual-level data on asset ownership and control for the production of gender statistics. Although agricultural surveys and administrative data sources are briefly addressed, the focus of the guidelines is on household surveys for two key reasons.
Towards a More Harmonised and Coordinated Global Approach
This Expert Group Meeting (EGM1 ) was convened with the purpose of examining land indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and promoting meaningful and harmonised approaches to monitoring women’s land rights (WLR)2 . It was convened by the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII) of the GLTN, UN Habitat, and Oxfam with inputs and assistance from Landesa, UN Women and Huairou Commission as part of a process of work on the development of methodologies for the land related SDG indicator monitoring.
Indicator details
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information.
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
In doing so, UN Member States took an historic step in accelerating the Organization’s goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
World Bank Group (WB)
The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. We are not a bank in the ordinary sense but a unique partnership to reduce poverty and support development.