Independent Kenya failed to recognize customary interests in land as possessing equal force as statutory derived rights. Issues related to land rights are perceived as  root causes of conflicts occurring in the 1990s and 2000s. The 2010 Constitution has embodied the fundaments of land reforms; it has acknowledged “communities” as legally entitled to hold land. Paper studies decision-making processes via a socio-anthropological approach showing how it contributes to understanding the issues at stake and the politics surrounding the design of new legislation around “community land”.

Ensuring gender equality with respect to land rights is hailed as a key element of the recent land reforms, but actual results are limited. Achieving gender equality requires a comprehensive focus on land, family and other laws, including customary, and on their implementation on the ground. Summarises the findings from a series of reports reviewing progress made and challenges remaining to achieve gender equality with respect to land rights.

Emphasises the need for donors, NGOs and governments to take a more comprehensive approach to women’s land rights that addresses underlying gender dynamics to bring about transformative gender change rather than token gains for women. To be effective, work to secure women’s rights to land must focus on tackling social relations to transform gender dynamics and needs to start at household level.

Conflict began in August 2011 when 3 village communities in eastern-central Côte d’Ivoire learned that the Belgian corporation SIAT was about to move onto their land. Report details the increasing conflicts and legal battles that followed.

Recent years have seen a new wave of large-scale acquisitions of farmland for plantation agriculture in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Less tangible changes are also taking place. In a globalised world, land governance is increasingly shaped by international law, developments in which law are shifting the balance between competing land claims and between private interests and public authority. International developments are also creating new spaces for contestation and accountability.

This guide is for organisations and individuals working to support communities whose land rights, lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by agricultural investments. It provides guidance on strategies for holding the actors involved in agricultural investments accountable for human rights violations and all sorts of malpractices, such as:

● Mapping investment chains

● Formal accountability mechanisms

● Complementary advocacy strategies

Training volunteers to help their communities defend their land rights has proved an effective approach for promoting land justice in Tanzania. Report documents how Hakiardhi, a Dar-es-Salaam based research institute working on land governance issues, has established and trained a 600-strong network of male and female ‘Land Rights Monitors’ (LRMs) operating in 300 villages on various aspects of the land law, so they can help people and local governments to exercise and ensure respect for their legal rights in land disputes, particularly in relation to large-scale agricultural investments.

Provides a backdrop of relevant policies and practice; a gender analysis of the policy framework governing land and investments; and recommendations on how to work towards land rights securing and better inclusion in land governance processes for women in Tanzania. Concludes that implementation of laws, including key gender equality principles, has been weak, and gender inequality in land access persists largely due to the continued dominance of (patrilineal) customary land laws and practice.

The complaints procedure of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is one of the options available to communities threatened by the negative impacts of the palm oil industry. Drawing on direct experiences of supporting communities to use it in Indonesia and Liberia, the report summarises how communities can get the most out of this procedure. Realistic outcomes include a temporary freeze on plantation development while longer term solutions are negotiated. Advises that several advocacy strategies be pursued simultaneously to maximise chances of success.

The process to develop a new Land Code in Chad is a positive step forward but the draft reflects a highly centralised system of land ownership, management and administration which risks excluding most people from the means to document and protect their land rights while also fostering widespread tenure insecurity. It considers customary rights as ‘temporary’ and gives full legal protection to a land title, which converts customary rights into land ownership, which is likely to be inaccessible for the vast majority of the population.

In Liberia it is estimated that around half the country’s land mass has been promised to foreign companies and investors. From 2009-11 the Sustainable Development Institute and NAMATI embarked on an action research project to support rural communities to protect, document, and manage their customary lands and natural resources. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, they sought to bring the voices and realities from rural Liberia to influential policymakers.

A brief on the need to secure land rights for the world’s pastoralists, who manage rangelands that cover a quarter of the world’s land surface but have few advocates. Covers the different paths pastoralists take; resource scarcity in the face of uncertainty; pastoralism and land use; loss and fragmentation of pastoralist lands and blocking of livestock routes; managing climatic variability and climate change; initiatives for securing pastoralists rights to land (Niger, Tanzania, India, Ethiopia).