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.
Jonathan White, writing for German Marshal Fund, discusses the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in the context of “Enlightened Capitalism.” Launched in 2012, the New Alliance seeks to lift 50 million people out of poverty in ten years by aligning local country plans, private sector investments, and G8 government commitments behind agriculture and nutrition in Africa. White notes that country ownership and public-private partnerships (PPP) are key to achieving the objectives of the New Alliance.
Strengthening women’s rights to own and inherit property provides them with greater opportunities to generate income and exercise control over family resources, which can improve women’s ability to feed and educate their children. This simple but powerful message is highlighted by Deborah Espinosa’s recent Huffington Post blog In Kenya, Land Rights Bring New Hope for Women and Girls. Espinosa is a senior attorney and land tenure specialist at Landesa, which implements USAID’s Kenya Justice project.
Last month, USAID’s Rwanda Land Project launched a new website that serves as a comprehensive source of information on land issues, specific to Rwanda. The new website aspires to be a one-stop shop for researchers, civil society organizations, policy makers, and citizens to gain access to:
land policies, laws and regulations;
land-related research and publications;
land news and events;
profiles of organizations that extensively engage in advocacy, communications, policy-making and research around land in Rwanda.
This article discusses how one group is contributing to critical thinking about how the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGs) are implemented. The Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) - an Africa-based alliance of agricultural research organizations - is both tracking implementation of the VGs and launching a study that will, among other things, investigate the multiple pressures toward the commercialization of land and the resulting impacts on land rights in Southern Africa.
On February 22, the South Sudan Council of Ministers passed the USAID-assisted draft Land Policy with minimal amendments. The Land Policy will now head to the National Legislative Assembly for review. While much work remains to be done, this event marks a notable step on South Sudan’s path toward developing institutions and policies for effective land governance.
Artisanal mining – a livelihood for an estimated 20 million people around the world – has historically not been an area where USAID and other donors have invested substantial resources. While a wide range of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) practices occur throughout the world, the exploration, extraction and trade of diamonds have become increasingly viewed as controversial due to purported links with rebel movements, environmental destruction, and child labor.
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.
This video from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) profiles a project relating to secure access to land and resource rights in Mozambique. The 19 minute film is narrated mostly in Portuguese with English subtitles.
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.
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