Contains ‘land grabbing’ starts at home; the commodity slide; the land footprint of international economic treaties. Argues that systemic action is needed to strengthen local land rights and voices in land governance.

Includes what is the problem and what can be done?; the law and customary land rights; how does Forest Law treat customary land rights?; lessons from other African states; the way forward. Argues that the current de jure reality is that most rural Cameroonians are little more than squatters on their own land with regard to forests and other land assets.

The spread and deepening of economic globalisation has highlighted the ever closer connections between the international legal arrangements for the governance of the global economy on the one hand, and claims to land and natural resources on the other. In a globalised world, land governance is shaped by international as well as national regulation. As pressures on valuable lands intensify and land relations become more trans-national, increasing recourse to international investment treaties is redesigning spaces for land claims at local and national levels.

State/people forest relations are at a turning point in Liberia. The crux of the issue is property relations and how the rights of rural Liberians to forests are treated in law and in practice. Central to the problem and the solution is the status of customary land rights. The paper tracks what happened to the natural rights indigenous Liberians have to their lands and the valuable forests that grow on them. It looks back at the treatment of customary land tenure over the century-long process of forming the modern Liberian state.

Summarises highlights from the first two and a half years of the programme, including insights on the legal levers that can be used to maximise local voice and benefit from local land rights to investor-state contracts through to community-investor partnerships, as well as a few milestones in IIED’s work on legal literacy training, exchange of experience and policy advocacy.

5 briefs analyse the roots of African land tenure systems, recent policy trends and the phenomenon of large scale land acquisitions. The briefs are: Customary Land Tenure in the Modern World; Putting 20th-Century Land Policies in Perspective; Land Reform in Africa: A Reappraisal; The Status of Customary Land Rights in Africa Today; The Global Land Rush: What this Means for Customary Land Rights.

Includes gender equality – a liberation struggle or a colonial imposition?; gender equality vs. traditional culture; women’s land rights in traditional culture; what are the practical solutions?; can the paradigm help improve women’s land rights?

In many parts of Africa, legal services organisations have developed innovative ways for using legal processes to help disadvantaged groups have more secure land rights. Their approaches, tools and methods vary widely – from legal literacy training to paralegals programmes, from participatory methodologies to help local groups register their lands or negotiate with government or the private sector through to legal representation and strategic use of public interest litigation.

Proposes a clear, simple method for characterising rights to land and natural resources and holders of land rights that can easily be applied in different cultures and legal systems all over the world.

A comprehensive review covering stages in the development of Zambia’s land policy; land administration – customary land and leasehold tenure; land titling; current land policy consultation process; outstanding land policy issues – alienation of customary land, land market issues, problems faced by the poor in securing land rights, legal framework; development aid for the land sector in Zambia and possible DFID support.

Looks at nomadic pastoralists’ rights to resources, rights to land and resources in Winye country in Burkina Faso, and land rights in forested areas and plantation economies. These suggest that we should always think of land as both a private and communal resource, consider the nature of different individual and collective actors, and see them as possible rights holders who may be recognized or ignored.

An examination of land tenure arrangements in the former homelands of South Africa and of post-apartheid attempts to deal with them. Includes a critique of the new Communal Land Rights Bill. Argues that the very limited capacity of government’s over-centralised land administration has been the bugbear of land reform in South Africa and that over-optimistic predictions of the speed and scope of reforms have haunted officials and politicians who made them. Fears the new Bill will undermine the opportunity to strengthen the land rights of the poor.