Guest commentary by Amanda Richardson, Resource Equity, and Ailey Kaiser Hughes, Landesa.
A growing body of evidence shows a correlation between gender-based violence (GBV) and land rights. Awareness of the possible GBV implications of land interventions is critical to understanding impacts on women.
The G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty in ten years through a partnership between G8 members, African nations and the private sector. In order to increase production at a rate needed to achieve food security, the New Alliance seeks to accelerate responsible investment in African agriculture and commit to coordinated policy reforms.
A new report from the World Bank suggests that Africa, which is home to half the world’s uncultivated land, can significantly reduce poverty, achieve rapid economic growth, and increase food security by improving land governance systems and strengthening land tenure and resource rights. “Land governance issues need to be front and center in Africa to maintain and better its surging growth and achieve its development promise,” says Frank Byamugisha, author of the report and lead land specialist in the World Bank’s Africa region.
In Benin, food insecurity is evidenced in the height and weight deficiencies in 40% of children under age 5, the limited availability of farmland, and the lack of diverse produce options in markets. At the same time, where farming is possible, some families who move elsewhere leave fields in their home village unused in order to show their ownership.
A recent article published by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) highlights the challenge of promoting forest management in areas that lack secure property rights, and the growing recognition that community forests need to be protected by the inhabitants themselves. Until inhabitants are secure in their right to the land and able to benefit from it, individuals will continue their rush to extract resources as quickly as possible for maximum personal benefit.
The vast majority of Liberian citizens – those living in rural communities – are on a path toward having customary land ownership rights recognized for the first time in Liberia’s history. A major milestone in Liberia’s lengthy land tenure reform process was reached on May 21 when the Liberian Land Commission presented President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf with the country’s first-ever Land Rights Policy, which defines Public Land, Government Land, Customary Land, and Private Land, as well as Protected Areas that will be conserved for the benefit of all Liberians.
On May 17, Liberian President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will discuss her administration’s goals, her perspective on land rights and land tenure security, and some of the challenges facing Liberia at a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker in Washington DC. A live stream of the event will be available at 2:30 p.m. EDT on May 17.
Near the end of January, Liberian President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf called attention to “the need for major reform of our land and natural resource governance systems” in her annual message to the national legislature.
According to AllAfrica.com, Liberia’s Inquirer newspaper recently honored Philomena Bloh Sayeh as 2012 Director General of the Year. Ms. Sayeh is the Director General of Liberia’s Center for National Documents and Records Agency (CNDRA) and is a key partner in USAID’s Land Policy and Institutional Support (LPIS) project. This award recognizes the ambitious reform efforts that Ms. Sayeh, with the support of USAID, has overseen at CNDRA during the past year.
According to AllAfrica.com, farmers in Liberia are blaming perceived climatic changes on the government’s policy of allocating large-scale concessions for mining, logging, and agriculture. A Liberian non-governmental organization, Green Advocates, organized a workshop in southeast Liberia during which farmers and other participants cited deforestation and forest degradation from large-scale concessions as a major factor in the changing climate in Liberia.
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