Land transformation has been at the centre of the economic growth of post-colonial Asia. In the 1990s, many Asian countries embraced economic liberalization and speculative business interests in land began to replace the state’s control of land for developmental purposes. The growing demand for land by corporations and private investors has fuelled several regional land rush waves in Asia, bringing them directly in conflict with communities that require these lands for their occupations and survival.

A Geografia é uma ciência que estuda o espaço (re)produzido a partir das relações sociais - dentre as quais as de gênero - estabelecidas no âmbito do trabalho social e conduzidas pelas demandas hegemônicas do capital. A concentração fundiária do município de Goiás/GO é um reflexo dessas demandas, representando a espacialização do capitalismo no Brasil e evidenciando as desigualdades inerentes desse sistema, por exemplo, ao impedir que parcela de camponesas e camponeses tivessem a possibilidade de se (re)produzirem social, cultural e economicamente, a partir do acesso a terra.

A Geografia é uma ciência que estuda o espaço (re)produzido a partir das relações sociais - dentre as quais as de gênero - estabelecidas no âmbito do trabalho social e conduzidas pelas demandas hegemônicas do capital. A concentração fundiária do município de Goiás/GO é um reflexo dessas demandas, representando a espacialização do capitalismo no Brasil e evidenciando as desigualdades inerentes desse sistema, por exemplo, ao impedir que parcela de camponesas e camponeses tivessem a possibilidade de se (re)produzirem social, cultural e economicamente, a partir do acesso a terra.

This report, and our campaign, is dedicated to all those individuals, communities and organisations that are bravely taking a stand to defend human rights, their land, and our environment.

207 of them were murdered last year for doing just that. On these pages we remember their names, and celebrate their activism.

And we reiterate our resolve to stand alongside those who continue the struggle for a better world and shine a light on these issues which are too often hidden from sight.

You are not alone. Justice will be done.

As organizations working on food security, natural resources management and poverty eradication, we strongly encourage governments to keep the profile of land and natural resources high in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda document to be endorsed in September 2015. Secure and equitable land rights are an essential element of an Agenda that has the ambition to be people-centred and planet-sensitive.

Impact of an intervention by the Rwanda Initiative for Sustainable Development (RISD) in contributing to the implementation of pro-poor and equitable land policies. Through evidence-based awareness raising efforts, dialogue, advocacy and networking, RISD was able to influence policy implementation and promote the land rights of poor and vulnerable groups, including women. 

Covers the rush to acquire land in Africa by foreign governments and private investors, fuelled by fears for global food security in the face of climate change and volatile food prices on the international market. Warns that the political and economic risks of these land purchases are colossal and outweigh any gains, and argues that African governments must make food security and sufficiency for their own people paramount.

Contains executive summary; food insecurity and the AIDS epidemic; barriers to women’s farming; women’s land rights; economic and social empowerment; violence against women; inheritance rights and property grabbing; politics, ideologies and vested interests; recommendations.

Includes official land rights in Kenya; refusing inheritance – widows and daughters in the patrilineage, dispute trajectories; institutionalizing women’s exclusion – local control boards, local dispute tribunals, formal courts; shifting the debate; working with constructive values in this context. The problem needs to be tackled using the avenues that currently promote the marginalization of women; the socio-cultural value systems that determine which behaviour, arguments, and actions are legitimate in a community.

Contains women’s rights and state-led agrarian and market based land reforms; reinstating the state; engendering customary tenure; rights of indigenous people and marginalised groups; human rights violations; HIV/AIDS; the ‘feminisation of agriculture’. Calls for a new agrarian reform agenda in which the state plays a central role, ensuring that land is established as a common public good, and that its benefits are enjoyed equitably by women and men, regardless of race, class or ethnicity.

Examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub-Saharan Africa and their implications for women’s interests in land. Demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions (including the World Bank, IIED and Oxfam GB), lawyers and academics about the potential of so-called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants. African women lawyers are much more equivocal about trusting the customary, preferring to look to the State for laws to protect women’s interests.