This guide provides tools to understand the Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible Governance of Tenure, which sometimes uses technical language that is not easy to understand for those who are not used to reading this kind of text.

To support the practical application of the OECD-FAO Guidance, in early 2018 the OECD and FAO launched an implementation pilot with over thirty companies and industry initiatives. The first stage of the pilot was a baseline survey to assess how companies and industry initiatives are implementing the OECD-FAO Guidance and other related international standards. This report presents the findings of the baseline assessment.

Enterprises involved in agricultural supply chains can create employment, raise labour standards and bring the technology to increase agricultural production or reduce pollution. But their activities can also contribute to food insecurity by leading to the eviction of local communities from their lands. Child labour and abuses of migrant workers and women are regularly reported. The production of some agricultural commodities leads to soil degradation, water resource depletion and deforestation.

This Guide aims to inform companies that hold land or purchase land directly from companies that hold land. It provides operational guidance for companies confronting “legacy land issues” and clarifies a company’s roles and responsibilities in dealing with legacy land issues in their existing holdings, while also providing direction on where to look for more detailed information and tools.

The objective of this document is to guide the corporates and investors understand how to respect peoples’ ’‘tenure rights to land, fisheries and forest”,and ensure that communities have access to remedies ‘acceptable to both parties’ when such rights are impinged or such potential is recognized.

The “Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security” (VGGT), endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012, set out principles and internationally accepted standards for responsible practices and is the first comprehensive intergovernmental global instrument on tenure and its administration.

The Tenure Guidelines aim to serve as a reference, providing guidance to improve the governance of land, fisheries and forests so that it can contribute effectively to securing the right to adequate food. The Guidelines thus constitute an internationally agreed upon normative standard that assesses the actions and omissions of states, UN agencies as well as international organisations with respect to the way they regulate land, fisheries and forests in specific situations. See box 1 below.

Guide to determine if monitoring is actually a viable activity that can be undertaken by their organisation. Choosing to undertake monitoring is dependent on considerations such as evaluating the sufficiency of resources, capacity to design a sound monitoring system, and availability of political windows to effect change, amongst others.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) are an international framework based on human rights obligations and standards for the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests. Adopted in 2012 by Committee on World Food Security (CFS) member countries, and following an inclusive negotiation process, they recognise the importance of land to a country’s development, and that good land governance and broad access to land enable food security for all people.1

Tenure is crucial to the livelihoods of billions of people. For many, their food security is linked to their tenure security. People with weak, insecure tenure rights risk losing their means to support themselves if they lose their access to natural resources. Women often have weaker tenure rights where there is discrimination in laws and customs. Tenure systems define who can use which natural resources, for how long and under what conditions. Many tenure problems are caused by weak governance and attempts to address them are affected by the quality of governance.

We must agree as a nation, that several mistakes have been made in our land deals in recent years. We were stampeding in the wrong direction without adequately consulting beneficiaries i.e. those who are directly affected, those individuals and groups who suffer if anything goes wrong. They are also seen but not heard i.e. the voiceless and marginalized living in the rural areas. 

From forced eviction to loss of livelihood, social status, savings and even life, land corruption in Africa has serious and far-reaching consequences. Such corruption comes in many forms, and it must be understood – along with the factors that enable it – before it can be tackled.