Inequalities in land rights exist globally, both in formal and customary settings. This is because land rights are either strong or weak, and held by various categories of people. The weaker variants of the inequalities tend to stifle tenure security, reduce land use, and threaten the food security of those dependent on the land for survival. This paper investigated the implications of customary land rights inequalities and varying tenure insecurity for food security among smallholder farmers in northwest Ghana.

Typically, peri-urban areas are havens and vulnerable receptors of customary land rights (CLRs) disputes due to the intrusion of urban activities or an uncoordinated mix of both. Although it is a dictum that CLRs cause setbacks to socioeconomic and spatial development, there seems to be a paucity of empirical studies on the effects of the CLRs disputes on the development of peri-urban areas, especially in developing countries, such as Ghana.

The period under review covers 20 months under a coalition government, a constitutional crisis and a few months when the president and the prime minister, leading different political parties, jockeyed for position. There was little political progress under the coalition government. The Office of Missing Persons was set up to investigate extra-legal disappearances and initiated some investigations. Parliament approved legislation to set up the Office of Reparations, but this is yet to be operationalized.

The land is an integral part of every state. Especially land has sacred and cultural value in most of the Asian traditions apart from its social and economic value. Sri Lanka is an island state which has 25,330 sq. Mi for 21,670,000 ("Department of Census and Statistics-Sri Lanka," 2019) of population and a country which inherent legal pluralism as a result of multi-cultural ethnicity and imperialism.

Characterized as divinely ordained, the Islamic law of inheritance defines women’s rights to property of the deceased with specific roles and responsibilities for each individual. Obviously, the Islamic law of inheritance is a major contribution to the legal system of the world, compared to the customary laws in the pre‐Islamic Arab society that denied any proprietary right by way of inheritance to female relatives including daughters.

Three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases are zoonoses, meaning they can be transmitted from animals to humans, with Ebola, SARS, MERS and now COVID-19 being examples. Scientists are warning that deforestation, industrial agriculture, illegal wildlife trade, climate change and other types of environmental degradation increase the risk of future pandemics.

This essay argues that an awareness of the historical relation- ships among land use, land tenure, and the political economy of Mongolia is essential to understanding current pastoral land use patterns and policies in Mongolia. Although pastoral land use patterns have altered over time in response to the changing political economy, mobility and flexibility remain hallmarks of sustainable grazing in this harsh and variable climate, as do the communal use and management of pasturelands.

Although land forms the basis for marginal livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, the asset is more strategic for women as they usually hold derived and dependent rights to land in customary tenure areas. Initiatives to secure women’s land tenure in customary areas are undermined by the social embeddedness of the rights, patriarchy, lack of awareness by the communities, legal pluralism, and challenges of recording the rights.

This report synthesizes the findings from field research on land and natural resource tenure in 11 administrative clan units (henceforth referred to as „clans‟) in Liberia, including Ding, Dobli, Gbanshay, Little Kola, Mana, Motor Road, Saykleken, Tengia, Upper Workor, Ylan, and the community of Nitrian. The report presents an analysis of critical implications of the findings of the study and provides recommendations for addressing sources of tenure insecurity faced by rural communities in Liberia.

In this onepager, you can find details on the LAND-at-scale project in Zimbabwe. This project is implemented by FAO and BEAT, and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. 

-- This project was discontinued in 2022 -- 

Malaysia has declared its vision of developed country status by the year 2020. Much has been written about its top-down development approach, its relative economic success and the social as well as environmental costs of such approach. In 2011 and 2012 the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) set into motion a national inquiry into the status of customary rights to land in the country. As part of the inquiry, a nationwide series of consultations was held over several months in 2012, culminating in formal public hearings in Peninsular Malyasia, Sarawak and Sabah.

With the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 (CoK 2010), land was classified into public, private and community lands, occasioning the need for clear guidelines on acquisition of public land acquisition within the community land while appreciating the provision of the Community Land Act, 2016.