Includes objectives, programme, welcome message, official opening, hopes and fears, introduction to LandNet, presentations, group work on land rights, redistribution, decentralisation, and the role of civil society, key issues, closing. The workshop endeavoured to publicise the findings of grassroots consultations on land carried out by LandNet members in order that these be incorporated into the forthcoming National Land Policy and the PRSP. Among the issues raised were insecurity and inequitable distribution and the ways in which land disputes are currently handled.

Contains introduction, progress and impacts since Addis Ababa, vision of LandNet West Africa, principles of operation, expected impacts, activities at sub-regional level.

Report on meeting of core group of LandNet West Africa with representatives from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Nigeria, Togo. Includes details of networking activities in these countries, lessons, successes and good practice, constraints and risks, funding, preparation for a regional workshop in February.

Report of a workshop in Ouagadougou to launch LandNet West Africa. Contains context and objectives of the workshop; stakes of land policies and legislation in West Africa (including decentralisation and transboundary issues); success and sustainability of the activities of a network; role of international and sub-regional organisations; major conclusions; structure of the network; funding; list and contact addresses of participants.

Covers orphans in Africa; the problem of guardianship; the Rwandan setting; post-war situation of orphans; children and the law(s); orphans’ efforts to assert land rights – land dispute cases; rethinking care giving for orphans. The 1994 genocide, combined with the impacts of HIV/AIDS, created 300,000 orphans in Rwanda. Many are heads of households who urgently need land-use rights, but a weakened system of guardianship and increasing pressures on land often prevent this.

Review of the situation of land rights in Apac District and of opportunities for land rights protection work. Examines the 1998 Land Act and its implementation in practice. Finds that the protection clauses for women are proving ineffective. Also looks at the major threats and barriers to land rights and suggests ways forward. Among many other pertinent questions, asks why the Ugandan Government has shown so little interest in customary tenure and why it pursues land titling to the extent it does.

Includes the land deal and competing land claims, socio-historical context, corporate responsibility or corporate displacement?, Mangoma and “angry villagers”. The case study of Chisumbanje, Zimbabwe, shows how ambiguous land rights emerge historically, particularly over state land, and that these long-running ambiguities come to the fore when land deals are struck. Issues that have lain dormant for decades become the focus for intense contests, which become captured by contemporary interest groups.

A study of the San, the poorest and most marginalised minority group in Namibia, with little access to existing political and economic institutions. They have been dispossessed of most of their ancestral lands and on lands they still occupy there are major issues of resource overuse, degradation, illegal grazing, unclear legal status and ongoing threats of dispossession. Looks at threats to San lands in 4 distinct parts of the country and the legal issues raised by those threats.

Includes introduction; vulnerabilities shared among all women; different categories of women have different vulnerabilities – widows, unmarried girls, divorced women, separated women, cohabiting women, married women; proposed solutions. Argues that rather than working against custom, policymakers and activists should be creative in identifying a range of culturally-appropriate solutions within custom that can successfully strengthen, defend and protect women’s land rights.

Background paper for an IDS Sussex workshop on new ideas on the rights to land, housing and property. Contains a renewed focus on poverty and, within that, a new focus on land rights; livelihoods and rights-based approaches; the World Bank and received orthodoxy in land policy; DFID’s focus on land rights in Africa; Francophone perspectives; recent World Bank thinking; the mysteries of capitalism (a discussion of de Soto); lessons learnt.

Consultation draft of a DFID Issues Paper on Land Policy by Julian Quan, with the author looking for comments and feedback by the end of November 2002. It revises an earlier version of April 2002, ’following a series of regional workshops on land policy sponsored by the World Bank, and takes account of comments received through that process.’ Includes the significance of land rights for poverty elimination; opportunities and challenges for pro-poor land policy; integrating land into poverty strategies; implications for DFID and the international community; conclusion.

This was a major and highly successful workshop on women’s land rights in Southern and Eastern Africa, organised by FAO and Oxfam GB. It attracted an unusually diverse range of participants. This official report summarises the papers, presentations and discussions in the original order of the programme.