There is an underlying tension in the land rights movement that is rarely addressed head on, which is the perception that securing women’s land rights threatens community land rights. Community land rights are typically held by indigenous people, small-scale and subsistence farmers, pastoralists, herders and many other groups who are directly dependent on land for their livelihoods but whose land tenure is often the most precarious.

This session zoomed in on the local situation and challenges faced by grassroots communities and women in some low-Income countries. It provided an overview of support provided by Civil Society organizations (and governments) facilitating communities, women in particular, to step up the efforts to strengthen their land rights and to generate resilience in face of the climate and COVID-19 challenges they are facing.

More secure land tenure provides much better opportunities to face climate and COVID-19 challenges by investing in high biodiversity local food & income systems.

By Ben Cousins, Emeritus Professor, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape

* This article originally appeared in the The Conversation on 22 June 2021

Près de la moitié de la population mondiale vit dans les zones rurales des pays à revenu faible ou intermédiaire. La sécurité foncière – à savoir le droit d’accéder aux terres et aux ressources naturelles, comme les forêts, les zones de pâturage communal, les zones de pêche et d’autres ressources collectives, et de les exploiter – joue donc un rôle fondamental dans le développement durable.

Advancing women’s land rights is a priority for the international development agenda. Yet, there is no consensus on which rights should be monitored and reported. Three indicators of women’s property rights are widely used in the literature. Each captures a different aspect of women’s land rights, but a recent paper explores the extent to which these different rights are held by the same person, using data from six African countries.

In Jharkhand, eastern India, women are not entitled to own land and accusations of witchcraft are wielded against them to silence their claims to land

When Talabitti’s husband died in 2016, her claim to the family land seemed to die with him. Though her husband had worked the family land by himself, upon his death his male cousins laid their claim. If Talabitti attempted to make a competing claim, they threatened to drive her away – with violence, if necessary. Sadly, this threat materialized.

Nous sommes ravis de partager le projet de notre module sur la gouvernance foncière pour une phase d'examen public (jusqu'au 15 mars 2020). Nous sollicitons vos commentaires sur notre sélection d'indicateurs et notre projet de guide de recherche, alors que nous explorons comment le Baromètre mondial des données peut suivre la gouvernance, la disponibilité et l'utilisation des données liées à la gouvernance foncière dans notre prochaine enquête.

Article written by Radha Krishna Khadka for Online Khabar, originally posted at: https://english.onlinekhabar.com/history-of-land-rights-movement-in-nepal.html

Photo: A rally organised in Surkhet district headquarters Birendranagar demanding establishment Organised Settlement Commission on September 07, 2017

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Written by Jagat Deuja and Rachel Knight for IIED and CSRC. Originally posted at: https://www.iied.org/helping-indigenous-communities-secure-land-rights-nepal

Main photo: Young 'social mobilisers' interviewed more than 2,700 landless or untenanted families and gathered the data that was needed for the government to register their tenure (Photo: copyright Kumar Thapa, CSRC)

By Owen Dhliwayo and Refiloe Joala