Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

Review for sub-Saharan Africa, examines the English-language literature and focuses on four important dimensions of exclusion: (i) exclusion from agricultural land; (ii) exclusion from agricultural livelihood; (iii) exclusion from formal and informal employment; (iv) exclusion from organization and representation.Paper is organized in six sections. The first section discusses concepts of exclusion. The main body of the review examines the four dimensions of exclusion listed above.

Recent years have seen pastoralist communities in Tanzania becoming increasingly impoverished and vulnerable, due to  livestock diseases, drought, fluctuating market prices and unfavourable policies. This paper discusses strategies to address the last of these factors with reference to the Ereto-Ngorongoro Pastoralist Project, which was set up in response to growing concern about the unprecedented and rising levels of poverty among pastoralists in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

The study was conducted to determine whether the gender difference in wealth and land allocation between male and female farmers in male-headed households is manifested in soil fertility indicators. It determined chemical fertility levels (fertility indicators) in the composite topsoil samples from 5 woman-owned plots and 5 man-owned plots in Ntanzi village, Uganda, on a Rhodic Ferralsol. A similar study was conducted on 8 woman-owned and 8 man-owned plots in Buggala Island, Uganda, on a Ferralic Arenosol.

Effective and well-designed land reform policies can provide sustained contributions to economic growth, reduced social unrest and poverty. This study analyses land reform policies in Angola and South Africa with a view to assess its impact on food security. Both countries have introduced extensive land reform policies following histories of colonialism, occupation and oppression which displaced many people.The paper begins with a background of South Africa and Angola and discusses the governments’ land reform policies.

In urban areas of Cote d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned matters most.Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend to focus on the incidence of poverty at a particular point in time. If the incidence of poverty increases, however, there is no information about how many new poor have joined the existing poor and how many people have escaped poverty.Yet this distinction is of crucial policy importance.

Poverty in the Near East and North Africa region (NENA) is mainly a rural phenomenon. Almost half (48%) the area’s population lives in rural areas. This report focuses on key rural poverty issues in 13 diverse countries in the region, without attempting to propose policy or programme actions at national or local levels. Overall, the rural poor still face traditional constraints such as water scarcity, inadequate rural infrastructure, inappropriate policies and institutions, weak local-level organisations and gender inequity.

What have we learned about land markets in South Asia about land reform, land fragmentation, sharecropping, security of tenure, farm size, land rights, transaction costs, bargaining power, policy distortions, and market imperfections (including those associated with gender)?Faruqee and Carey review the literature on land markets in South Asia to clarify what's known and to highlight unresolved issues. They report that: We have a good understanding of why sharecropping persists and why it can be superior to other standard agricultural contracts.

This paper presents an overview of pastoral systems and addresses rights issues around access and control of resources in the context of climate change.

This paper is motivated by the observation that children in land-rich households are often more likely to be in work than the children of land-poor households.The vast majority of working children in developing countries are in agricultural work, predominantly on farms operated by their families. Land is the most important store of wealth in agrarian societies and it is typically distributed very unequally. These facts challenge the common presumption that child labour emerges from the poorest households.

This first progress report for the five-year Sida programme provides a comprehensive review of programme activities, progress towards outcomes, risks encountered and lessons learned in the first 18 months – from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2015. It also discusses adjustments required to Year 2 implementation as a result of these findings.