An article on women's land rights by Mu Sochua - Cambodian MP and former Minister for Women's Affairs - on the Cambodia Daily (January 10th 2012)
ABSTRACT: In recent years the government of Laos has provided many foreign investors with large-scale economic land concessions to develop plantations. These concessions have resulted in significant alterations of landscapes and ecological processes, greatly reduced local access to resources through enclosing common areas, and have ultimately led to massive changes in the livelihoods of large numbers of mainly indigenous peoples living near these concessions.
The report considers the causes, processes and impacts of rangeland fragmentation on pastoralists in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Causes and processes include privatisation of resources, commercial investment, invasion of land by non-native plants, commercialisation including growth in individual enclosures, and conservation/National Parks. The impacts include increasing wealth divides and a growing inability to overcome and vulnerability to drought.
A two-pronged agricultural land reform was devised in Georgia to move toward a market- oriented economy, one prong being the distribution of land parcels of up to 1.25 hectares in ownership to rural families (the “small parcel” approach), and the second being the leasing of the remaining state-owned land in larger allotments to physical and legal entities. The land reform program was intended to create a self-maintaining sector of subsistence-oriented small farmers and a market-oriented sector controlled by larger leaseholders.
On 23rd of January the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has launched a new position paper on large scale investment in land and its implication on development policies. Objective of the position paper is to reflect the recent dynamics. Currently the paper is available in German only.
Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.
Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.
En esta edición de La Revista Agraria presentamos un especial sobre la concentración de la tierra en el Perú, con artículos sobre el tamaño de los latifundios, variables a tener en cuenta para limitar la propiedad rural, el acaparamiento en la subasta de tierras del proyecto Olmos, y los problemas ambientales que presentan los proyectos de irrigación en la costa. También se hace un análisis del presupuesto del MINAG y la problemática del sector vicuñero.
I am sharing this extremely important report from Margaret Sekaggya, the Special Rapporteur of the situation of human rights defenders (2011). In 2007 the former Special Rapporteur, Hina Jilani, affirmed that “the second most vulnerable group when it comes to danger of being killed because of their activities in the defence of human rights, are defenders working on land rights and natural resources” (Hina Jilani, 2007, Report submitted to the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/4/37).
The structure of this review is as follows: the first section discusses how contract farming is defined for the purposes of this review and briefly describes the history and extent of contract farming globally. The second section details the main factors contributing to the increased incidence of contract farming in developing countries, and describes the most common models utilised. Section 3 covers the main conceptual and theoretical perspectives on contract farming.
The main objective of this paper is to provide a) a presentation of the diversity of land related conflicts in Africa, b) an analysis of underlying causes of conflicts and experiences in conflict resolution and, c) lessons learnt and best practices from the policy and legal responses and links with enhancement of land governance in the region.
