Report presents grassroots women’s approaches to access justice with a focus on land and property rights in Africa. This community empowerment-based research undertaken by the Huairou Commission and its partner groups across 7 African countries – Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – showcases women’s rights challenges and effective strategies to improve women’s access to justice. These groups are making an impact through strategies such as community mapping exercises, local-to-local dialogues, and developing community watchdogs and training community paralegals.

Includes country context, legal and institutional frameworks, 4 case studies. The new government of South Sudan has begun promoting large-scale private investments as a shortcut to rapid economic development. Recent major land deals threaten to undermine the land rights of local communities. Lack of a regulatory framework encourages opportunistic companies and is a potential source of future conflicts. Need to place limits on land-based investment until an appropriate regulatory framework is in place.

Members of rural communities in Namibia often lack a basic understanding of what their user rights and responsibilities are under the Communal Land Reform Act and are also unaware of their rights to object to a proposed land allocation or to appeal a decision once made. The large-scale acquisition of land for agriculture and conservation projects often displace local communities or reduce their access to control and ownership of key resources due to the gaps between good legislation and inadequate implementation and enforcement.

Indigenous and community lands, crucial for rural livelihoods, are typically held under informal customary arrangements. This can leave the land vulnerable to outside commercial interests, so communities may seek to formalize their land rights in a government registry and obtain an official land document. But this process is often time-consuming, complex and costly and, in contrast, companies can acquire land relatively quickly and find short-cuts around regulatory burdens.

Despite increasing attention in recent years, little evidence has been available on the issue of women, land and corruption in Africa to inform effective policy-making. There has been no compilation of relevant background information, lessons learnt and approaches to tackling land corruption as it affects women. This publication aims to address that gap, providing practitioners and decision-makers with a compendium of research findings, contextual information and practical solutions to help fulfil women’s land rights.

Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.

O presente artigo analisa o processo pedagógico da luta de gênero que ocorre dentro da luta pela terra a partir do protagonismo das mulheres trabalhadoras do campo.

La investigación como un tejido de relaciones, complicidad y empatía
Ruth Bautista Durán

This report reviews trends since the GLF in Dakar in May 2015 to the GLF in Bandung in September 2018. It draws on 21 submissions from 18 ILC members and three ILC initiatives, covering a total of 30 countries across different continents. The submissions were made in response to an open call issued by the ILC Secretariat in March 2018. They provided insights about some of the issues that members are grappling with.

Transparency International’s experience shows clear links between the issues of land governance, women’s rights, corruption and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These links are especially prevalent in lower-income countries, where people’s reliance on their land is greatest, and land governance and women’s rights are often weak – as highlighted in our 2018 resource book Women, Land and Corruption. 

Oxfam India is part of a global movement working to fight poverty, injustice and inequality; in India it works in seven focus state. Oxfam India aims to improve poor people’s access, rights and entitlements over land and natural resources in order to support and augment their livelihoods. Through its programme on smallholder agriculture, Oxfam India focuses on socialising the identity of women as farmers, strengthening the economic leadership of women farmers, ensuring their land rights and making public investments in agriculture accessible to small farmers, especially women farmers.