The Secretariat has the honour to present to the Human Rights Council the report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, prepared pursuant to Council resolution 33/12. In the report the Special Rapporteur briefly refers to the activities undertaken since the submission of her last report, provides a thematic study on attacks against and the criminalization of indigenous human rights defenders and reflects on available prevention and protection measures. She concludes with recommendations on how various stakeholders can prevent violations and improve protection.

The Land Portal Foundation, Landesa and the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) co-facilitated a discussion on Liberia’s Land Rights Bill between July 18 and August 8, 2018. The discussion took place in collaboration with the Rights & Rice Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, and the Land Rights Now campaign. 

The full dialogue can be read here.

There is today a growing awareness of the importance of providing rural populations with more secure tenure to land and other natural resources, not least in Africa where approximately 90 percent of all land is still unregistered. At the same time there has been a rethinking of approaches for securing local tenure rights in practice. Experience has shown that the conventional approach, i.e., individual freehold titling, has often not worked well in areas where communal forms of customary tenure predominate, which is still the case in most parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and critically examine newer alternative approaches to the securitization of customary land rights in Sub-Saharan Africa with particular emphasis on certain challenges which need to be tackled in order for these to have an inclusive and equitable outcome at the local level. The content of the paper is primarily based on a literature review though the challenges identified with these new approaches are based on observations from the author’s own on-going research on the land tenure reform in Mozambique.

This guide presents a people-centred gender approach to increase and improve the provision of goods and services from agriculture, forestry and fisheries in a sustainable manner while reducing rural poverty. It first introduces the proposed approach for improving gender equality in territorial issues, with specific guidance for each phase of the gender-response planning process. Then, it presents some available participatory tools to support planning of gender-responsive territorial development.

Many  African  countries  rely  on  sporadic  land  transfers  from customary to statutory domains to attract investment and improve agricultural performance. Data from 15,000 smallholders and 800 estates in Malawi allow exploring the long-term effects of such a strategy.

A functioning land administration sector is the foundation for economic growth. Unfortunately, effective land registry and cadastral systems with national coverage exist in only a fraction of the world’s countries. Cadasta Foundation is working to overcome this challenge by developing simple digital tools and technology to help partners efficiently document, analyze, store, and share critical land and resource rights information.

The research provides a holistic overview of the key changes that affected Northern Chin society from pre-colonial times up to now in villages close to Hakha town where State penetration was stronger than in more remote

areas. The study sheds light on the overlapping and evolving statutory and customary land systems and on the issues faced by contemporary Chin communities as they seek to govern land and natural resources.

This guide provides background information on the original project and pilot implementation, describes the model and its components, and provides the reasoning and objectives behind each activity to help implementers understand the model’s strengths and make informed decisions about tailoring the existing model for the context in which they plan to work.

En el año 2000, se intensificaron las amenazas de expansión de la frontera agrícola, extracción de madera, cacería comercial y pesca masiva no controlada, creándose conflictos entre aripaeños y foráneos por el uso del bosque y sus espacios. Por ello, los comunarios del lugar iniciaron las conversaciones para concretar un Acuerdo de Conservación.

The Community Land Act of 2016 provides a legal basis for protection, recognition and registration of community lands andhas provisions for management and administration of the land by the communities themselves. However, implementation of the act has been slower than anticipated. This is despite the current  heightened investment interests in community lands for mega development projects.

Statutory recognition of rural communities as collective owners of their lands is substantial, expanding, and an increasingly accepted element of property relations. The conventional meaning of property in land itself is changing, allowing for a greater diversity of attributes without impairing legal protection.