For the past few decades, efforts to strengthen women’s land rights in many sub-Saharan African countries have primarily focused on a single approach: systematic registration through individual/joint certification or titling. While registration — individually or with a spouse — may support tenure security in specific contexts, the sheer complexity of land governance practices and tenure arrangements across the continent (both formal and customary) often render an emphasis on systematic titling inadequate.

After the political change in Nepal of 1951, leapfrog land policy improvements have been recorded, however, the land reform initiatives have been short of full success. Despite a land administration system based on cadaster and land registries in place, 25% of the arable land with an estimated 10 million spatial units on the ground are informally occupied and are off-register. Recently, a strong political will has emerged to ensure land rights for all.

"Participatory law-making” is the process by which citizens actively contribute to policy advocacy and law-drafting. Citizen participation in law-making can improve the quality and legitimacy of policies and laws by ensuring that they reflect and protect the authentic interests of the national citizenry. In the field of land rights, participatory law-making can help ensure the recognition and protection of legitimate tenure rights.

Long-term, sustainable and responsible ways to access and share data are fundamental to all efforts to support sustainable development and particularly salient to improving land governance and securing land rights for landless and vulnerable people. The COVID-19 pandemic has unequivocally demonstrated that the need for land rights has never been greater, as governments have shut down land administration systems and rolled back regulations protecting vulnerable communities.

For more than five years, the Women’s Land Tenure Security (WOLTS) Project has been investigating the intersection of gender and land relations in mining-affected pastoralist communities in Mongolia and Tanzania. The aim has been to develop a methodology for long-term community engagement and capacity building to protect and support the land rights of all vulnerable people – thus to fully mainstream attention to gender equity in land tenure governance within a framework that would facilitate improvements in community land rights across the board.

About the workshop

On 28th June from 2pm - 5pm CEST the LandPortal and LandVoc Community of Experts hosted a workshop as part of the 4th AGROVOC Annual Editorial Meeting to support shared learning and dialogue on the development, promotion and adoption of AGROVOC sub-schemes. 

This guide is intended to supplement other resources that provide broader overviews of human rights due diligence. It will be particularly helpful for downstream businesses or investors as they navigate how to identify, address, and track the impacts of their value chains on indigenous peoples. The guide will also be useful for policymakers as they design due diligence legislation.

To ensure a better and more sustainable future for all, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (“the 2030 Agenda”) has identified 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. SDGs range from poverty eradication, zero hunger, decent work and reduced inequalities to quality education, clean water and sanitation, and gender equality, only to name some of them.

Les organisations collaboratrices du réseau RRI dans la région africaine ont à ce jour mis en œuvre bon nombre de projets avec pour objectif principal de sécuriser les droits fonciers des peuples autochtones (PA) et des communautés locales (CL), dans l’idée que cela constitue le socle primordial sur lequel s’appuient toutes les autres formes d’engagement en faveur des communautés.

The recognition of customary tenure systems and responsible land-based investments that safeguard legitimate tenure rights and right holders are the interconnected main themes for mainstreaming the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) in Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Viet Nam.

Les conflits fonciers et leur résolution à l’échelle locale dans un contexte de marchandisation de la terre. Une étude de cas dans les Hautes Terres à Madagascar.