This bi-annual addition of id21 Natural Resources Highlights looks specifically at rural livelihoods. It contains the following three articles:

New thinking needed to tackle the rural employment crisis

A further 106 million people will have joined the rural labour force in the developing world by 2015. This article asks whether enough jobs can be created in rural areas to meet this demand, or whether further urban migration is the only answer.

How can small-scale producers compete globally?

Land tenure security is crucial for women's empowerment and a prerequisite for building secure and resilient communities. Tenure is affected by many and often contradictory sets of rules, laws, customs, traditions, and perceptions. For most rural women, land tenure is complicated, with access and ownership often layered with barriers present in their daily realities: discriminatory social dynamics and strata, unresponsive legal systems, lack of economic opportunities, and lack of voice in decision making.

This paper examines the marginalization of women's land rights by governmental institutions and rural women's movements in Brazil.

This document summarises the proceedings from a conference organised by International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) , Natural Resource insitute (NRI) and the Royal African Society in November 2004.The conference brought together a wide range of interest groups including, African policy makers, academics and civil society representatives, as well as representatives of the private sector and international agencies, to debate the way ahead for land rights and land reforms in Africa.

Land tenure reform remains a key policy issue in Africa, given the large proportion of people relying on land and natural resources for their livelihoods. This paper addresses the exclusionary nature of many processes around land, which can lead to social divisions.

Kenya’s land governance system is fashioned to facilitate land expropriation for the few and powerful who continue to resist reforms.

This is despite the fact that the dynamics of land reform are driven by apprehensions of mischief associated with the history that explains why the National Land Commission was established with mandate, independent of the Executive.

CAPITALISM

From the British conquest, Kenya’s land governance system was never meant to be inclusionary and equitable.

How can the abstract principles of the human rights-based approach (HRBA) be translated into practical strategies to improve women's ownership and access to land? In Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, despite changes in national law and policy aiming to improve women's land tenure, none of the land reforms meet human rights standards. This is because legal regulation of land blurs with customary laws mostly relating to land transactions and family, marriage or inheritance.

The renovation process in Vietnam in the past decade has enabled significant economic growth as well as and greater rights and more important economic roles of farming households. However, much of this reform has focussed on men as head of households, meaning men have benefited more from economic reform, both economically and in terms of their power within the household. Inequalities continue in access to and control of key resources such as land, water, credit and rest time, as well as in access to public services.

This submission by the government of Egypt to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) combines the fourth and fifth periodic reports, covering the period 1994 to 1998. It highlights the important role women have played in the country's development processes. The women's movement in Egypt has received widespread support and encouragement from governmental and non-governmental actors alike.

While the majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly Eastern Africa provide a living for their families on land, they largely do not own it. This comprises one part of a study on women and land in five countries in Eastern Africa - and was commissioned by the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).

This study attempts to analyse changing patterns of land transfer and ownership, as well as school investments by gender over three generations in customary land areas of Ghana's Western Region. Traditional inheritance rules deny land ownership rights to women. Yet the increase in the demand for women's labour due to the expansion of labour intensive cocoa cultivation has created incentives for husbands to give their wives and children land. Through this and other gift mechanisms, women have increasingly acquired land, thereby reducing the gender gap in land ownership.

The Domestic Relations Bill is a crucial piece of legislation for Ugandan women. It addresses women's property rights in marriage and women's right to negotiate sex, it sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen, prohibits female genital mutilation (FGM) and criminalises widow inheritance. Bride price is still not prohibited, but the payment of bride price will no longer be essential for formalising customary marriages. The bill criminalises marital rape and provides for civil remedies, such as compensation and restricting orders.