In December 2009, Kenya adopted a new National Land Policy with the purpose of resolving the myriad of land tenure problems throughout the country. The policy calls for the recognition of customary community lands and land governance, addressing inequitable land distribution rooted in historical injustices, instituting a transparent and accountable system of land administration, and ensuring the effective protection of women’s rights to land and related resources, including the provision for joint spousal registration and documentation of land rights.

USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights (LTPR) Division has released a new suite of tools and methodologies created under the recently completed Property Rights and Resource Governance (PRRG) Project. These tools were designed to enhance the understanding of LTPR challenges and improve programming to advance the global development objectives of the United States, including food security, global climate change, conflict mitigation and women’s economic empowerment.

On April 10, representatives from U.S. NGO Landesa presented an impact evaluation on USAID’s Kenya Justice Project during the World Bank’s Annual Conference on Land and Poverty. Kenya’s 2010 constitution provided greater legal recognition of women’s rights to own and inherit land; the Justice project – which is implemented by Landesa – has piloted a model for improving community awareness and acceptance of those formal rights in order to make them a reality for rural women.

Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of more than 200 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) committed to ending child marriage, recently featured an article on how women's land rights can help reduce child marriage. The article describes how USAID’s Kenya Justice project has helped improve girls’ access to education by working with customary justice systems to strengthen women’s land rights in target communities.

Here’s a short video (within the blog post) from Landesa that “connects the dots” between securing land rights and improving educational opportunities for girls. The connection may not be immediately clear so teasing out the links – which the blog does – is important:

Last week, we shared an example of an innovative participatory project design in Kenya. This week, our example of an innovative participatory project design comes from Kosovo.

Guest commentary by Dr. Cynthia M. Caron, Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University.

By M. Mercedes Stickler, Land Tenure and Evaluation Specialist, USAID.
Last month, I had the opportunity to take part in the inaugural Conference on Land Policy in Africa. This event—organized by the Land Policy Initiative—highlighted the fact that land is one of the most important development issues facing Africa today.

Guest commentary by Anna Knox, Chief of Party, USAID's LAND project in Rwanda.

USAID welcomes The Coca-Cola Company’s recently announced commitments to ensure that its sugar suppliers protect the land rights of local communities. Coca-Cola - the world’s largest purchaser of sugar - agreed to revise its corporate Supplier Guiding Principles to incorporate principles that recognize and safeguard local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights to land and natural resources.

By Dr. Gregory Myers, USAID Division Chief, Land Tenure and Property Rights
USAID recently sponsored Devex’s Land Matters campaign in order to raise awareness about the importance of property rights. Throughout this campaign I stress that secure land tenure and property rights (LTPR) is the gateway to economic growth, food security, sustainable natural resources management, and other development goals.

Why are secure property rights and good land governance fundamental to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Earlier this month, a group of experts provided answers to this question – and worked to build support for a prominent role for land tenure security and property rights in a Post-2015 MDG framework - at a side event at the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS).