The key concept of the Global Strategy for Shelter, and its successor the Habitat Agenda, is that of enabling; of governments' stepping back from housing production and measures to control the price of outputs and, instead, working to enable the current and potential suppliers of housing to do what they do best. A major part of the enabling process is to set in place a regulatory context in which urban development can be sustainable and of the scale required for all to be adequately housed. This inevitably means a reduction of standards so that they are realistic.

Does poverty in Egypt have a woman's face? Is female poverty linked to their conditions in the labour market or levels of education? Are women particularly at risk in poor households? This report addresses the gender dimensions of poverty using the recent Household Expenditure, Income and Consumption Survey of 1999/2000 for Egypt. Poverty measures of males and females were found to be significantly different, in both urban and rural areas, where higher levels are observed among females than males.

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights.

Based on a case study of two Moldovan regions, the paper challenges the favourable assessment of recently established peasant farms in a World Bank study by LERMAN et al. (1998).

This annual report takes as its theme the central challenge facing the institute and its partners at the start of the new millennium: making the livestock revolution work for the poor. It is a companion report to the institutes new strategic plan, which takes the revolution as its basis in determining how ILRI's programme should evolve in the first decade of the 21st century. The report begins and ends on a farm in central Ethiopia, whose mixed crop-livestock producers are just beginning to participate in the expanding dairy market of the country's capital, Addis Ababa.

Stresses views of conference participants that agrarian reform is an alive issue on the political agenda of many countries. A wide consensus on the positive contribution that more equal access to land and other assets makes to the fight against poverty. Meaningful reform must involve the transformation of property rights. Agrarian reform must involve state regulation to overcome the failure of markets to deliver equitable outcomes. Also a wide consensus on the need for strong and effective state action.

Gives views of the Alliance on co-ownership in current controversy with the Vice-President. Mentions studies carried out by the Alliance and the Ministry of Lands. Concerned about government’s marginalisation of issues concerning women and poverty. Urges it not to distort co-ownership but to try to understand it.

The analysis of `ambiguous lands' and the people who inhabit them is most revealing for understanding environmental deterioration in Thailand. `Ambiguous lands' are those which are legally owned by the state, but are used and cultivated by local people. Land with an ambiguous property status attracts many different actors: villagers hungry for unoccupied arable lands in the frontiers; government departments looking for new project sites; and conservation agencies searching for new areas to be protected.