Examines the draft Land Policy in depth. Provides an overview of the Policy and highlights the key areas of proposed change and their possible impact. Looks at the context, the problems addressed, the Policy framework, objectives and principles, strategic guidelines and options – land tenure, administration, the land registry, land transactions, and use and management of land.

Examines progress made on land related provisions in the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with special reference to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states in central Sudan. Includes history of the land issue in the two contested areas; the CPA and progress in meeting land commitments; is there anything to learn from the rest of Africa on land matters?; conclusions and recommendations; overview of 20th century land legislation in Sudan.

Covers what is ‘land’ and what ‘property’ in the proposed Constitution?; where is land covered; common questions…with some answers; what does the proposed Constitution actually say and not say about land?; so what is the verdict? Concludes that it opens the door to significant reforms and failure to perform could be a matter of challenge in the courts. Ordinary Kenyans will need to hold the State to account in devising appropriate legislation and programmes swiftly and with the maximum of public participation.

Focuses on tackling land issues in post-conflict states. Root of problem is that most rural populations are little better than squatters on their own land in the eyes of the law. Remedy is to acknowledge customary land rights as equivalent to private property rights.

A contribution to the current vibrant debate on land in Kenya following recent upheavals. Argues the need for a radical restructure of the way property relations are governed because what is being contested today is not just property but power over property. Makes practical suggestions for genuinely local democratisation of land governance. Need to act on identified illegal allocation of public land; devolve, not de-concentrate, land administration and to the most local level possible; and vest radical title in real communities, not district/tribal territorial domains.

Critical shifts are affecting rural resource rights in Africa through widespread reform in land, forestry and other laws. The cutting edge of transformation affecting women is in emerging new provision for wives to hold family property as co-owners with their husbands, which could play a main role in revitalising smallholder agriculture. Recognition that equity in domestic land relations may ultimately be a prerequisite to the modernisation of subsistence agriculture in agrarian economies is the thesis underlying the analysis of legal texts in this paper.

State/people forest relations are at a turning point in Liberia. The crux of the issue is property relations and how the rights of rural Liberians to forests are treated in law and in practice. Central to the problem and the solution is the status of customary land rights. The paper tracks what happened to the natural rights indigenous Liberians have to their lands and the valuable forests that grow on them. It looks back at the treatment of customary land tenure over the century-long process of forming the modern Liberian state.

An executive summary and recommendations are followed by 5 chapters: on the land question, reform and farm workers; the scope and process of fast track reform; the impact of land reform on farm workers’ livelihoods; food security, vulnerable groups, HIV-AIDS and coping strategies; and after the ‘promised land’ – towards the future. Study reveals that by early 2003, only about 100,000 of the original c.320,000 farm workers were still employed on the farms, the others are jobless and landless and have lost their entitlement to housing, basic social services and subsidised food.

Revisits Zimbabwe’s land question 5 years after the launching of the ‘fast-track’ land redistribution programme which has created a new paradigm, the consequences of which will take many years to work through the country’s political, economic, and social fabric. Briefly defines old and new versions of Zimbabwe’s land question before outlining salient aspects of the reform process. Assesses the outcomes of the redistribution, the apparent lacuna between land and agrarian reform, and the debate the reform process has kindled.

Includes the sources of women’s legal status; women’s rights to land and other natural resources; the rights of women agricultural workers; the rights of self-employed rural women; toward the realisation of women’s rights: legal reform and implementation.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has issued a landmark judgement for marginalised communities across Africa. It ruled that the Kenyan government violated the rights of the Mau Ogiek people by evicting them from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest complex. This is the first time the court has ruled on an indigenous peoples’ rights case or in a case with mass human rights violations indicated. All indigenous forest peoples in Kenya (c.135,000) will find it easier to advance their own claims for recognition as owners of presently classified “government” forests.

A summary of a larger study. Examines the relationship of people’s rights in land to the manner in which they may be involved in the management of forests in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho and to a lesser degree Botswana and Swaziland. Includes examination of property relations, state power, land reform, recognition of customary rights, the changing nature of tenure, and the impact of new land law on community forest rights.