This study explores the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in Kenya, with a particular focus on women as a socially vulnerable group. It examines: the ways that HIV/AIDS-affected households are coping in terms of land access, use and management; the consequences of these coping strategies on security of access and rights to land; and how changes in land tenure, access and rights to land among different categories of people are affecting agricultural productivity, food security and poverty.

This paper provides an analysis of the effectiveness and equitability of West African judicial, legal and administrative institutions for:providing accessible dispute resolutionprotecting the security of the urban and rural poor to hold and use land.The authors compare legislation of customary and non-state regulatory institutions in Ghana, with the greater Pluralism of Côte d’Ivoire.

Land policies in Africa have often overlooked the interests of certain social groups. In some areas, traditional access and ownership rights for women, migrants and pastoralists have been ignored or reduced.  The rise of HIV/AIDS in the region has created new social groups who are vulnerable to discrimination by land policies. As new policies are formed in the region, it is important to consider why these groups have been excluded. This will help to ensure that future policies represent these groups more fairly.

Series of papers on land tenure issues including: Piloting local administration of records in Ekuthuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, by Donna Hornby (AFRA, South Africa)Ivory Coast’s Plan Foncier Rural: lessons from a pilot project to register customary rights, by Camilla Toulmin (IIED) Customary land identification and recording in Mozambique, by Chris Tanner Supporting local rights: will the centre let go?

Rural citizens have increasingly begun to invoke perceived citizenship rights at transnational level, such that rural citizen engagements today have the potential to generate new meanings of global citizenship.

This collection of briefing papers summarises select papers presented at the workshop: "Land Rights for African Development: From Knowledge to Action" held in November 2005.

Assesses the ongoing land registration process in the Amhara Region and its outcomes for women. The paper finds that while land policy and registration procedures aim to guarantee women’s access to land, practice on the ground suggests more needs to be done to support women’s rights in the implementation process.Land registration, initiated in 2003, stipulates that both spouses should be named on the certificate.

The 1998 Land Act represents one of the most important pieces of legislation in Uganda, which is predominantly an agricultural country. The role of a consortium of NGOs, The Uganda Land Alliance (ULA), is analysed in this paper, with regard to the enactment of the Act. The issues addressed include:

This policy brief argues that the time, funding and institutional support required to carry out tenure reform in South Africa have been seriously under-estimated. Reformed tenure rights are ineffective and vulnerable if isolated from other entitlements such as training, finance and integrated development initiatives.

Report finds that land rights in Ethiopia are highly insecure, and higher tenure security and transferability could enhance investment and agricultural productivity. Trying to identify and implement measures to increase producers’ tenure security could have a large pay-off in terms of rural productivity and poverty reduction.The authors use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity.

Analyses the range of institutional arrangements being used for gaining access to land and natural resources in two regions of southern Benin.

This paper presents an analysis of the actions and omissions of the Guatemala State in respect to its obligations under the human right to food, and also refers to several paradigmatic cases of violations of the right to food within the context of the indigenous population and land and labour conflicts.