This training manual focuses on how to manage and resolve conflicts over land tenure rights, security of tenure and land access in the field of rural development. It results from complementary activities undertaken within FAO's Livelihood Support Programme (LSP) and the Land Tenure and Management Unit and with the International Land Coalition. It addresses the specific issues of land tenure identified in the volume Negotiation and Mediation Techniques for Natural Resource Management published by the LSP.

Up to 2.5 billion people hold and use the world’s community lands, yet the tenure rights of women—who comprise more than half the population of the world’s Indigenous Peoples and local communities—are seldom acknowledged or protected by national laws.

A recent surge in agribusiness plantation deals has increased pressures on land in many low- and middle-income countries. Rural people have mobilised to protect their rights, seek better terms or oppose the deals altogether. Since 2014, an initiative in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal has worked to help people harness the law in order to have greater control over decisions that affect them – a process commonly referred to as legal empowerment. 

A new report by IDMC and Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) offers the most comprehensive analysis to date on Israel's lethal enforcement of Access-Restricted Areas - (ARA) - live-fire zones imposed by the Israeli military forces on large swathes of the Gaza Strip.

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Armed conflict broke out in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002, which caused the country to be divided in two: the north under the control of the Forces Nouvelles rebels and the south in the hands of the government. It also caused the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. In the west of the country, and in particular in the two regions of Moyen Cavally and Dix-Huit Montagnes, the crisis provoked a series of successive displacements involving population groups with competing claims over land.

Joint handbook by OCHA/IDD, UN HABITAT, UNHCR, FAO, OHCHR, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)

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Report produced in conjunction with the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and assessing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities as a result of the West Bank Wall and its regime.

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A new joint report from Community Network in Action (CNA), Ponlok Khmer, GRAIN, Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association (CIYA), and the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) exposes the devastating consequences of land grabs for indigenous communities in Preah Vihear province, northern Cambodia. 

This edition of The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) presents objective and comprehensive information and analyses on the current state, trends and challenges facing two of the most important agricultural production factors: land and water.

Conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appears intractable. Since a peace agreement was signed in 2003, officially ending a decade of war in the country, an estimated two million civilians have died and millions of others have been forced to flee their homes, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

This guidance note provides a framework for understanding and addressing land and natural resource-related grievances and conflicts through a holistic, systematic approach. While the main emphasis is on violent conflict, it may also be useful in a variety of other situations characterized by significant land-related grievances, but which are not currently or openly violent. It is intended for staff of multilateral organisations, national and local governments, and civil society organisations.

While early attempts at land titling in Africa were often unsuccessful, the need to secure land rights has kindled renewed interest, in view of increased demand for land, a range of individual and communal rights available under new laws, and reduced costs from combining information technology with participatory methods. We used a difference-in-difference approach to assess the effects of a low-cost land registration program in Ethiopia, which covered some 20 million plots over five years, on investment.