Most developing countries have less than 30 percent cadastral coverage. This means that over 70 percent of the land in many countries is generally outside the land register. This has caused enormous problems for example in cities, where over one billion people live in slums without proper water, sanitation, community facilities, security of tenure or quality of life. This has also caused problems for countries with regard to food security and rural land management issues.

In order to build on the momentum and to be able to move from individuals action to change towards a youth responsive land sector at scale, there is a need to strengthen the knowledge base and to broaden the understanding of how youth’s land rights and needs are intricately linked to sustainable development in rural and urban areas.

The following recommendations are made in this report:
1. The continuum of land rights is a metaphor, not a theory. A metaphor can be applied in a number of theoretical contexts, whereas a theory has an ideological perspective.

This publication on Secure Land Rights for All demonstrates how secure land rights are particularly important in helping to reverse three types of phenomena: gender discrimination; social exclusion of vulnerable groups; and wider social and economic inequalities linked to inequitable and insecure rights to land. It argues that policymakers should adopt and implement the continuum of land rights because, no single form of tenure can meet the different needs of all social groups.

This paper sets out how one crop – sugar – has been driving large- scale land acquisitions and land conflicts at the expense of small-scale food producers and their families. At least 4m hectares of land have been acquired for sugar production in 100 large-scale land deals since 2000, although given the lack of transparency around such deals, the area is likely to be much greater. In some cases, these acquisitions have been linked to human rights violations, loss of livelihoods, and hunger for small-scale food producers and their families.

(...) The aim of this document is to contribute to clarifying  human rights obligations related to access to land  and agrarian reform. We believe that clarifying existing obligations will enable a better analysis of the violations of the right to food related to access to land, it will improve case documentation and contribute to improving the efficiency of the justiciability and enforceability of the right to food with regard to access to resources.

The crisis that engulfed the Central African Republic (CAR) in the end of 2012 resulted in the perpetration of gross human rights violations, including the widespread looting and destruction of homes. As people fled the violence they left behind land which others occupied illegally. More than a year after the height of the crisis, approximately 440,000 Central Africans continue to be internally displaced. Almost half a million are refugees in neighbouring countries.

Palestinian women living in refugee camps and gatherings in Lebanon have little opportunity to realise their HLP rights. They face the double discrimination, challenged by both formal Lebanese law and familial Palestinian social systems.

In 2001, the Lebanese Government passed a law forbidding people who do not hold citizenship to a recognised state from getting property rights in the country. This has left many Palestinian refugees either losing property that they owned, or unable to inherit property from family members.

Follow Rose, and see her impact, as she travels the Rwandan countryside educating communities about women’s rights to land.

In Defence of Life follows the struggles and triumphs of four communities resisting large-scale mining projects in Colombia, the Philippines, South Africa and Romania.

Courageous environmental and human rights defenders from these communities describe how they have suffered and why they are standing firm to protect their families, land, water and life from destruction by mining.

Their inspiring David and Goliath struggles demonstrate that when injustice and destruction become globalised, so does resistance.

This publication is designed to help companies understand the need for enhanced transparency around land-related impacts and the importance of respecting the land tenure rights of local communities. It offers insights into what land-related sustainability information stakeholders are interested.

The 2003 Maputo Declaration on Food and Agriculture committed signatory countries across Africa to a 10% allocation of national budgets to agriculture by 2008. To bolster the implementation of this commitment, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was established. But 12 years later, the situation for women smallholder farmers across Africa has hardly changed.