CESCR calls for written contributions to the draft general comment on Land and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is developing a general comment on Land and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The purpose of this general comment is to clarify the specific obligations of States parties relating to land and the governance of tenure of land under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Increasing women’s access to land is crucial to fight hunger and poverty. However, gender disparities in land access remain significant in most countries, regardless of their level of development. A new FAO database helps to understand the factors that prevent women from accessing land; and to design better policies to effectively address this situation. rural development, hunger, food security, economic crisis, prices, agriculture

As part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact Agreement, the Government of Lesotho has implemented an institutional strengthening and land regularization project in the urban and peri-urban areas of the capital city Maseru. The main objective of this project is to strengthen the rights of the legitimate occupiers of the land by a process of formalizing those rights. This formalization process of the rights to land is expected to promote private sector development and stimulate economic growth.

A broad consensus has emerged that strengthening women’s property rights is crucial for reducing poverty and achieving equitable growth. Despite its importance, few nationally representative data exist on women’s property rights in Asia, hindering formulation of appropriate policies to reduce gender gaps in land rights. This paper reviews existing micro-level, large sample data on men’s and women’s control of land, using this information to assess gaps in land rights.

Unequal and insecure access to land undermind women's farm productivity, limit employment options, depress their earnings, and degrade the environment. Factors limiting women's access to land include legal discrimination, land scarcity, inappropriate government policies, and lack of political power and social status. Policies to promote sustainalbe development rather than focusing on family planning, as is commonly done, should directly support women's economic activities.

The formalisation of local or customary land rights is often seen as a means of tackling insecurity of land tenure and encouraging investment. Several tools, such as the Rural Land Plans (PFRs) used in Benin, seem to resolve the tension between the logic of registering rights in order to increase productivity and the logic of securing complex local rights and reducing conflict. But while PFRs are potentially a good tool for dealing with complexity, current policy debate in Benin tends to focus on them as a tool for privatisation.

It is widely believed that land tenure insecurity under a customary tenure system leads to a socially inefficient resource allocation. This article demonstrates that the practice of granting secure individual ownership to tree planters spurs earlier tree planting, which is inefficient from the private point of view but could be efficient from the viewpoint of the global environment. Regression analysis, based on primary data collected in Sumatra, indicates that an expected increase in tenure security in fact led to early tree planting.

Inefficiently organized, factory-dominated cityscapes have been one of the more enduring legacies of the twentieth century experiment with socialist central planning in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Drawing on a unique survey of large, formerly state-owned urban industrial firms in Russia, we explore how land tenure reforms affect the pace at which this legacy is being erased. Specifically, the privatization of plots is shown to promote the development of a rental market that transfers land use rights away from socialist-era industrial users.

According to the data of survey on farmers' land right from Rural Development Institute (the USA) , Renmin University of China and Michigan S ate University, this paper conducts empirical analysis on farmers' willingness to accept compensation ho e land is expropriated and the related influencing factors by adopting Logistic model. The study indicates that the proportion of farmers' non-agricultural income, the level of economic development in the region, participation right and right to vote, exert conspicuous impact on farmers' satisfaction degree whose land is expropriated.

Land Economics/Use,

This research is conducted to contribute to the currently ongoing policy debate on the benefits of collective vis-à-vis individual land tenure rights. The paper attempts to explore the Mozambican community land delimitation (CLD) program based on a community-level survey conducted in mid-September 2014. The survey revealed that land conflict is the main reason to initiate a CLD process, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are major players in initiating and helping the CLD process.