Increasing women’s access to land is crucial to fight hunger and poverty. However, gender disparities in land access remain significant in most countries, regardless of their level of development. A new FAO database helps to understand the factors that prevent women from accessing land; and to design better policies to effectively address this situation.

Document de travail sur les régimes fonciers 20. Ce document analyse les caractéristiques des systèmes de propriété communale dans divers pays d’Asie. Les pressions actuelles du marché sur les ressources naturelles créent à la fois des défis et des opportunités pour les communautés et pour les gouvernements en vue d’utiliser et de renforcer les systèmes de propriété commune pour promouvoir la gestion durable des ressources naturelles. Des politiques et des institutions ad hoc sont nécessaires pour promouvoir la redevabilité des acteurs et la bonne gouvernance de ces ressources.

Across rural Africa, land legislation struggles to be properly implemented, and most resource users gain access to land on the basis of local land tenure systems.

Los programas de atención a la reducción de emisiones provenientes de la deforestación o degradación de los ecosistemas, como es el caso de REDD+ y otros programas de incentivos forestales como son los pagos por servicios ambientales (PSA), podrían constituir una oportunidad para el fortalecimiento de los procesos de conservación, aprovechamiento sustentable y reducción de la pobreza en la región mesoamericana, y en particular en los territorios y comunidades indígenas.

Eviction of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands is one of the most destructive and degrading mitigation strategy performed by modern governments in developing countries to address climate change. Armed police and soldiers are used to forcefully evict indigenous peoples to pave the way for investors and conservation in the name of climate change mitigation.

This briefing note call attention to the ongoing situation of harassments and arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders in Loliondo in northern Tanzania.It offers an account of the recent events taking place in the area and background information.

IWGIA believes that these developments are a cause of great concern. The detentions, harassment and trumped up charges undermine civil society and other stakeholders, limiting their options to carry out human rights work in Tanzania.

Many internally displaced people (IDPs) find refuge in cities. However, the scale of global urban internal displacement caused by violence, conflict, disasters and development projects is unknown. Cities struggle to accommodate IDPs since their movements are largely spontaneous, and some authorities may resist helping IDPs for fear of encouraging further influxes. Meanwhile, IDPs face displacement-specific challenges to rebuild their lives in urban settings and may be displaced again in the process due to lack of housing tenure security and violence and insecurity.

The NGO Forum on Cambodia, in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries, organized a national consultation workshop on 19-20 December 2016 on the sixth version of the draft Cambodian Agricultural Land Law. In addition to inputs from various stakeholders at the workshop, a legal review was conducted with the assistance of Mr. George Cooper, an independent senior legal expert experienced in land policies.

The need for affirmative action and the mainstreaming of the commons community plus a comprehensive strategy to secure indigenous and community land has become a major global concern of the 21st century. To achieve this will require out of the box reform mechanisms and the participation of the communities concerned, such that the reforms recognize and embrace indigenous systems and structures that offer avenues to secure collective rights, land use and management of commons resources; namely pastures, water and forests among others.

SUMMARYThe reform era around the turn of the century in Indonesia has been followed by a revitalization of local claims to political authority and natural resources on the basis of adat and indigeneity. In May of 2013, the Constitutional Court acknowledged indigenous ownership of forest territories and declassified them from State-owned forest zones without further conceptualizing the notion of indigeneity and its relation to land tenure and territorial conflicts.

SummaryThere are compelling reasons to encourage the employment of Indigenous Australians in the forestry sector. The benefits of, and constraints to, Indigenous employment in the sector were examined using a case study approach focused on Indigenous participation in ‘Operation Farm Clear’, an emergency response following Cyclone Larry in northern Queensland in 2006. The findings suggested that, given a supportive environment, there are opportunities for Indigenous people to benefit from employment in the forestry sector.