This policy brief addresses the essential problem in linking property rights with food security.

CATALYZING THE SOCIO-LEGAL
SPACE FOR ARMED CONFLICT:
LAND AND LEGAL PLURALISM IN
PRE-WAR LIBERIA

Land Policy Reform, Customary Rule of Law and the Peace Process in Sierra Leone
Jon Unruh. African Journal of Legal Studies (2008) 2: 94-117

Toward sustainable livelihoods after war:
Reconstituting rural land tenure systems. Jon Unruh 2008. 32 103-115

When reading about women in pastoral societies it is common to find reference to their marginalised roles, their hardship, their oppression and their lack of power as opposed to men’s domination, men’s ownership, men’s power and associated patriarchal relations.

The Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) is a community-based organisation established in 1997 in Tanzania. It was founded to promote the development of Maasai pastoralist women and children by facilitating their access to education, health, social services and economic empowerment. It seeks to address women’s marginalisation in patriarchal Maasai culture, as well as the poverty among the Maasai that has long been underpinned by land access restrictions for pastoralists, hunters and gatherers.

In most areas within the livestock wildlife environment interface, nomadism by pastoralists is gradually being replaced by sedentarism and migration corridors are closed by settlements from the ever-increasing human population. Faced by a reducing pasture resource and yet slow to adopt de-stocking, pastoralists have now embraced the practical and novel ‘Conservancy’ concept in order to earn from tourism and subsidise income from livestock. However, sustaining wildlife on pasture land is a challenge that has now found a solution in the form of conservancy zonation schemes.

The Kenyan Dry land Livestock and Wildlife Environment Interface Project (DLWEIP), An African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) and African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) have developed a Community Scout Based Natural Resources Monitoring Programme for Naibung’a Conservancy of Laikipia District in February 2007. A wildlife and habitat monitoring programme was established at four group ranches in Naibung’a conservancy including Tiamamut, Kijabe, Koija and Nkiloriti.

A workshop to analyse and synthesise a set of global case studies on pastoral organisation for resource rights including case studies from Argentina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Ethiopia, France, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kygyzstan, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Scotland, Switzerland, Uganda

This document describes the consultation of traditional authorities in Namibia on how communal land is managed and on the registration of customary land rights.

[adapted from UNDP] May, 2008- This UNDP discussion paper ‘Pro-Poor Land Tenure Reform and Democratic Governance’ provides a review of how different types of land tenure reform relate to decentralization and local governance, in theory and in practice.  The discussion suggests that in order to create more democratic and transparent local management of land resources, special mechanisms to protect women against direct and indirect discrimination, as well as the establishment of local land committees and land tribunals for conflict resolution are needed.

[via UNDP, 2008] These 4 Policy Briefs from UNDP show how increasing knowledge about gender relations and empowerment has highlighted the importance of access to and control over land within intra-household gender relations, and what this implies for broader concerns about empowerment of the poor.  Moreover, significant knowledge gaps are also found in discussions on the link between land policies and cultural, territorial and gender empowerment issues.