In this introductory video to the Global Programme Responsible Land Policy answers are given to what it wants to achieve, how it works and why land rights are so important. The Global Programme is commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), co-funded by the European Union and works in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Laos, Madagascar, Peru (completed in 2021), Uganda and Paraguay (completed in 2018).

Report from the online discussion held on the Land Portal between 28 June and 9 July 2021.

The online discussion explored the different pespectives around customary law and institutions in Southern Africa and the roles they play in governing land.

USAID programs and Missions implement activities that improve land rights, support inclusive land and resource governance, build resilient livelihoods, and promote women’s empowerment. This brief explores the relationship between gender norms and women’s land rights, introducing key social norms concepts and tools to identify and shift harmful norms in the context of land and natural resources.

Land in Ethiopia is held by the state, who acts as a custodian for the Ethiopian people. Even though it is the state which controls land ownership, farmers and pastoralists are guaranteed a lifetime ‘holding’ right that provides rights to use the land, rent it out, donate, inherit and sharecrop it. Everything except sell and mortgage it. On paper and under existing formal laws, women have equal rights to men as far as use and control of and access to land is concerned.

Customary land is increasingly recognised as an important governance issue in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
The aim of this paper is to identify challenges associated with land administration, land governance and land
dispute resolution in PNG as perceived by stakeholders; and to find potential strategies for promoting bankable
customary land titles. From the 2019 National Land Summit, a need for a new approach that is theoretically
better anchored in the current debate on bankable customary land leases has been identified. This paper builds

Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa analyses contestations of power and control over land through the lens of local case studies in the densely settled former African ‘homelands’ or Bantustans. These were areas reserved for African occupation by the apartheid government and when the ANC came to power in 1994, they were the poorest and least developed parts of the country. Over the last few decades, mineral deposits have been exploited and some are located close to the boundaries of rapidly expanding cities, such as Durban, where peri-urban land is at a premium.

Measuring gender inequality in land ownership is essential for assessing progress in women’s economic empowerment, tracing the impact of progressive laws on actual practice, and monitoring SDG 5 on gender equality. To effectively assess inter-gender (male-female) gaps in land ownership, however, requires multiple measures. We also need to know which women are more likely to own land by tracing intra-gender differences. To date, no study on India has provided a full range of measures on inter-gender inequality in land ownership or focused on intra-gender variations.

The webinar Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the name of COVID-19, organized by Forest Peoples Programme, the Tenure Facility,  Middlesex University, the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and the Land Portal Foundation, took place on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

Global leaders increasingly recognize that land rights for indigenous and local communities are a prerequisite for achieving national and international goals for forest governance, food security, climate mitigation, economic development and human rights.

With the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 (CoK 2010), land was classified into public, private and community lands, occasioning the need for clear guidelines on acquisition of public land acquisition within the community land while appreciating the provision of the Community Land Act, 2016.

In this onepager, you can find details on the LAND-at-scale project in Zimbabwe. This project is implemented by FAO and BEAT, and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. 

-- This project was discontinued in 2022 --