This guide provides step-by-step instructions on establishing and operating a paralegal or other community-based program to help people obtain legal identity documents. It is primarily for people designing and managing community-based paralegal projects to help clients access documentary proof of citizenship and other forms of proof of legal identity, such as birth certificates.

Land transformation has been at the centre of the economic growth of post-colonial Asia. In the 1990s, many Asian countries embraced economic liberalization and speculative business interests in land began to replace the state’s control of land for developmental purposes. The growing demand for land by corporations and private investors has fuelled several regional land rush waves in Asia, bringing them directly in conflict with communities that require these lands for their occupations and survival.

Short summary of an event with over 1000 participants and nearly 550 papers. Presented a paper with former FAO colleagues in Mozambique on community level legal empowerment programme to encourage local people to more effectively defend their rights under the progressive 1997 Land Law.

Includes genesis of the CFJJ-FAO programme – policy and legal reforms, challenges for land governance today, legal empowerment and land governance; the twin-track approach; the training programme – paralegal courses, local government and sector officer seminars; results and impact – overall impact, gender issues and women’s land rights; discussion; a format for change – the empowerment chain. Important to have a long term view. The law indeed is not enough.

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations.

Since 2014, a set of initiatives in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal has worked to help people harness the law in order to have greater control over decisions that affect them in a process of legal empowerment. In the three countries, the initiative developed diverse approaches, responding to different local contexts and theories of change. Each embodied a distinctive combination of grassroots action, public advocacy and private sector engagement – through supporting junior lawyers in Cameroon, grassroots committees in Ghana and locally negotiated “land charters” in Senegal.

Improving women’s ability to securely access land is recognized as an effective means to increase gender equality and advance other key social and economic development goals. Despite progressive laws in many African countries, gender disparities commonly persist in women’s access and ownership of land. Although legal empowerment of women can help to strengthen their claims to land, governments commonly lack the capacity to offer legal services.

Includes setting the scene: accountability in large-scale land acquisitions; the role of the law in shaping pathways to accountability; citizen action – how effective are the bottom-up checks and balances?; under what conditions can citizens achieve justice and equitable outcomes in relation to land acquisitions?; what role for research?

This report draws lessons from experience of using legal processes to secure local resource rights within the context of foreign investment projects in Africa. Security of local resource rights is a major challenge in many parts of Africa. The analysis of relevant law reveals that resource rights associated with more powerful interests (foreign investment) tend to enjoy greater legal protection compared to those held by local resource users.

In many parts of Africa, legal services organisations have developed innovative ways for using legal processes to help disadvantaged groups have more secure land rights. Their approaches, tools and methods vary widely – from legal literacy training to paralegals programmes, from participatory methodologies to help local groups register their lands or negotiate with government or the private sector through to legal representation and strategic use of public interest litigation.

From the mid-2000s, a commodity boom underpinned a wave of land use investments in low- and middle-income countries. While agribusiness, mining and petroleum concessions often involve promises of jobs and public revenues, they have also prompted concerns about land dispossession, exclusionary investment models and infringements of the rights of vulnerable groups. One of the major challenges is in empowering rural people to make informed choices, exercise their rights and have their voices heard.

Contains background, policy responses (PRSP, LSSP, national gender policy), legal responses (Constitution, co-ownership, Land Bill 1997 and Matembe Clause, Land Act 1998 and Consent Clause, Land Amendment Bill 2003), challenges, way forward, annexes.