General

Women’s Rights to Land For Economic Empowerment project aim to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for productive resource, employment and land in particular. The grant applied to LCSL will support the implementation of Women’sRights To Land For Economic Empowerment. This project among other things will support the organization to identify differences among women and men as to accessing land in the Tanzania under the customary land tenure system, identify the contributions of on-going land reforms in increasing women’s access to land in their respective areas (villages), assess the constraints and opportunities affecting access to land by women econamicaly and socially and assess the influence of religion and intermarriage on women’s access toland for economics earning as well as to identify and form women’s mechanisms/groups to protect women against any possible loss of their access rights; and Among the activities that will be implemented in this project includeto build advocacy capacity of pastoralist women and young mother and support their engagement on women’s land rights for economic empowerment, strengthen the advocacy approaches of women’s network on land rights for economic empowerment, create four (4) groups of women within our cooperative to promote entrepreneurship through land. Four (4) groups will have access to land for economic activities, training pastoralist women and young mothers on entrepreneurship through land, organize maasai festival and provide public award to 2 creative business ideas generated by pastoralists maasai women and young mothers through land. The aim is to break the stigma and taboos around women’s rights to land and to support the trained 4 pastoralists women and young mother groups to access capital for their business. This will include link them with the financial institutions, support them with materials for business startup, link them with local government authority of development fund.

General

Eastern and Southern African Farmers Forum-Uganda (ESAFF-Uganda) is part of a regional small scale farmers# coalition established in 2002 during the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg to bring together small scale farmers, pastoralists and traditional fisher folks at different levels into a social movements with a common aspirations and ensure learning <(>&<)> linkages. ESAFF- Uganda is a partner implementing Right to Food in Uganda with the role of working with small scale farmers, consortium members of R2F project and other like-minded organizations to push for the recognition of small scale farmers# voices by organizing farmers and support their participation in high level lobby meetings, campaigns, dialogues and policy meetings. ESAFF Uganda and Oxfam In Uganda piloted the Oxfam Meaningful Community Engagement tools in Large Scale Land Based Investments in Agriculture (MECoT- LSLBI) in Amuru district in 2017, with funding from Oxfam Pan African Team. Experience of piloting the LSLBI tools in agriculture in Amuru district coupled with the trend of land dispossession from small scale farmers by private and public large-scale land investors necessitate empowering communities with practical-innovative tools and approaches that help to position them to engage meaningfully throughout the investment processes and stages for a win-win engagement. Above all, the land rights of the poor need to be protected first by the landowners themselves and other concerned stakeholders, and thisis the rationale of scaling up the LSLBI tools inAmuria.

General

Following an eight-year legal battle, the Court#s judgment finally provides a long awaited unique opportunity for enforcing the respect of the human rights of the Ogiek as well as other minority and indigenous peoples (MIPs) in Kenya, by securing their access to productive resources (land <(>&<)> water mainly), as well as by fostering space for their political participation. The first ever indigenous community rights decision of 26 May 2017, the Court formally recognised the importance of respecting indigenous communities# land rights in Africa by ruling that the Ogiek's right to their ancestral lands, and linked cultural and religious rights among others, had been violated by the Government of Kenya as a result of decades of evictions in the name of conservation. As such, the ruling provides a unique opportunity for the Ogiek to secure the recognition of their rights violated until now and in partnership withother indigenous communities in Kenya and Africa to pursue changes in the law, policy and practice governing the rights of indigenous peoples and natural resources, especially when linked to conservation building upon this historical precedent. In these favourable circumstances and within the first 12 months following the ruling, the project will ensure the rapid and effective implementation of such an exceptional decision by collectively engaging and mobilising all key identified stakeholders, to (i) facilitate and prepare the ground for the Court's forthcoming reparations order and (ii) to initiate the enforcement of the ruling, to monitor the firststeps of its implementation and pave the way for it to benefit other Minority and Indigenous communities (MIPs) in Kenya and acrossAfrica facing similar issues.