Grassroots organizations do not need to wait for the state to implement Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (Tenure Guidelines or TGs). Rural communities can take governance into their own hands and use TGs as a tool for investigation, reflection and action. The challenge is how to take the next step: under what conditions can TGs provide the rural poor with resources to organize and mobilize?

Drawing on insights from multiple studies, this policy brief addresses the importance of gender considerations for small-scale livestock farming communities relative to food security in the South African context. The brief examines some key elements of gender issues in relation to small-scale livestock farming, asks how some of these elements align with current policies and practices, and suggests a number of focused policy recommendations. Two thirds of the world’s 600 million poor livestock keepers are rural women.

The study investigates the state of women’s land rights under statutes and customary practices in Cameroon and how the conception of these rights affects women’s role in the economy. It concludes that the future of women’s land rights will depend largely on a complete change of the current land management system and instruments, which are outdated and inadaptable to the present socio-economic context. Legal literacy and women’s individual empowerment are critical elements necessary to accompany any land reform that will ensure women’s land rights are a reality and not an empty slogan.

The project aims to create actionable policy proposals to make spaces of participation more effective in five countries in Latin America, and to contribute to the needs of existing social movements within their local contexts. Currently the study is mapping specific effects of implementation of participatory reforms on the distribution of power and resources in communities, the pathways through which such effects are produced, the accountability of domestic decision-makers, and impacts on successive iterations of legal reform.

The Katkari are classified as a Primitive Tribal Group with specific measures for legal protection of their rights, and there are provisions in the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) to compensate land owners in cases of expropriation of land. This paper provides a rationale, co-created by the villagers, to continue learning about their land rights, and to explore more actively the options for diversifying community livelihoods.

The aim was to analyze the obstacles to, and opportunities for women’s access to land, with emphasis on the identification of more effective strategies in improving the security of women’s land rights. This report is a programme evaluation including lessons learned. Case studies drawn from the advocacy project are attached as Annexes.

The paper analyzes a workshop to enhance Katkari claims to land, which the tribal people have inhabited for 45 years. Participants felt confident in the findings of the exercise and with their decision to proceed with a petition to village authorities. They also said that the assessment gave them a better sense of their relative power and legitimacy in relation to the issue. The conditions for making a petition for legal title to the hamlet improved during three months, due to shifts in the assessment of power and interests for a number of stakeholders.

The project report summarizes women’s lived-experiences with regard to land reform issues. The research aimed to generate knowledge about the linkages between access, rights, and security, and barriers to land access faced by women beneficiaries of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe. It analysed the allocating processes and authorities, as well as resettlement patterns under the programme, including details of the resettlement model, land size, and date of access to the land.

The land in fishing communities is especially susceptible to land grabbing. Findings reveal that lawlessness, ignorance of the law, unlawful evictions and increasing conflicts in fishing and farming communities, all lead to loss of access to land and fishing grounds. This report gives background and context of the research, clarifies the legal and policy framework governing the use of land in Uganda, while providing background on the Mukono district.

This report presents a preliminary synthesis of existing findings emerging from IDRC-supported projects on large-scale land acquisitions and accountability in Africa. Two-thirds of foreign land deals take place in developing countries with serious hunger problems and in countries with the weakest land rights protection laws. Investments to date have served to highlight existing weaknesses in the management and governance of agricultural lands and local communities.

The Constitution of Kenya (2010) has provided the means for confronting new challenges to evictions and access to justice faced by vulnerable groups such as the residents of Mukuru. New jurisprudence has begun to emerge, addressing the human rights implications of evictions. Project researchers along with the Katiba Institute and Strathmore University’s School of Law work closely with the community to investigate different existing tenure arrangements in Mukuru to determine how the Constitution and land laws can be used to address challenges related to insecure land tenure.