What are the effects of trends away from legal pluralism towards more uniform approaches to the law? This paper analyses the effects of legal changes in property rights for people's welfare and development in India.

While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it.

Current Tanzanian land law offers registration of private interests in land in the form of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) within a broader community lands approach. We conducted qualitative research on the issuance of CCROs along a mountain slope transect in Meru district in northeast Tanzania. This area features intensified smallholder agriculture that evolutionary theory suggests is well adapted for registration of private interests in land.

Argues that there are 5 shortcomings in both the old (World Bank) and contemporary (Hernando de Soto) arguments for formalisation of land title. First, legality is constructed narrowly to mean only formal legality. Therefore legal pluralism is equated with extra-legality. Second, there is an underlying social-evolutionist bias that presumes inevitability of the transition to private (conflated with individual) ownership as the destiny of all societies. Third, the presumed link between formal title and access to credit facilities has not been borne out by empirical evidence.

Includes women’s land rights and tenure security in a context of legal pluralism and land tenure privatization; competing legal systems and land rights protection on the ground � what is going wrong? Argues that in a context of increasing land scarcity, high population pressure and progressing land tenure privatization, men are increasingly taking advantage of their superior position within the patrilineal tenure system, advancing their own interests at the expense of weaker family members, first and foremost the women in the family.

There is broad recognition, across the political spectrum and in both 'northern' and 'southern' countries, that justice reform, and more generally the promotion of the 'rule of law', are central to development policy, particularly in conflict-affected, fragile and violent contexts. More recently an increased focus on global security and the interaction between security and development as put a renewed emphasis on such efforts.

Climate change and its implications on development in Tanzania should not be understated or ignored. Instead, discussions on our changing climate should begin with the recognition that climate change is undermining efforts to eradicate poverty. Yet, scientific complexities, jargon, uncertainties and debate have led to a general lack of understanding and confusion on how to address a changing climate, including policy prescriptions.

Quila Quila refleja un caso de disputa de pueblos indígenas originarios ante el Estado, por la defensa de su territorio y reconocimiento de su autonomía. Sus luchas datan de la invasión española, han estado latentes durante la república, y se articulan a la disputa abierta por los territorios indígenas de fines de siglo XX, así como el cambio constitucional entre el 2006 y 2009.

Las autoridades campesinas de Zongo en la lucha por la defensa de su territorio demostraron que legítimamente son autoridades para ejercer justicia en sus territorios y en lugares donde la gente quiera acogerse a su jurisdicción, se abrió un camino para practicar su autodeterminación recuperando las tierras que había acaparado un empresario minero.

Se trata de un caso de restitución de territorios ancestrales, que reivindica el acceso a un territorio mayor al que el Estado republicano redujo en su división político administrativa. En su lucha por la consolidación territorial, la organización originaria genera mecanismos y consideraciones para garantizar el acceso a la tierra de sus comunidades, de las mujeres y las nuevas generaciones.

This study uses a newly compiled database of women's property rights and legal capacity covering 100 countries over 50 years to test for the impact of legal reforms on employment, health, and education outcomes for women and girls. The database demonstrates gender gaps in the ability to access and own property, sign legal documents in one's own name, and have equality or non-discrimination as a guiding principle of the country's constitution. In the initial period, 75 countries had gender gaps in at least one of these areas and often multiple ones.