September 1, 2020 (Ezega.com) -- At least 12 people were killed and 10 others wounded in ethnic-based clashes over forest ownership rights in Ale special district in South Nations Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia, an official has said.

“Gunmen killed 12 persons and wounded several others in pre-arranged attacks in Gerama and Guroze localities in Ale district,” Government Communication Affairs Head of the district Sawra Gebeyehu told local media.

The Quezon City government has bought a property in Barangay Bagong Silangan and Payatas  to house some 3,000 informal settlers. 

Mayor Joy Belmonte has signed the deeds of sale of 214,057 square meter property.

“Ito’y umpisa ng hangarin nating mabigyan ng katiyakan sa paninirahan ang mga informal settlers sa ating siyudad (This is the start of our dream to assure informal settlers that they would have their own homes in the city),” Belmonte said, noting that when she was elected mayor, part of her agenda is to address the concerns of the city’s informal settlers.

Mbabane: The Human Rights and Governance Consortium under CANGO has called for the amendment of the laws governing the land tenure system to confer security of land ownership and protect communities from unlawful evictions.

This follows the recent evictions which took place at Mangwaneni in Mbabane on August 24, 2020.

Kampong Speu provincial police and NGO ACNCIPO director Chea Hean stopped nearly 100 people from grabbing more than 200ha illegally in the Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary on Wednesday.

The incident occurred at the Trapaing Thmea village in Oral district.

Hean said on Wednesday the people intended to claim the area for private ownership and prepared to build sheds and clear forest land to grow crops. Authorities intervened and the 100 or so families protested.

He said they eventually listened to instructions and returned to their respective homes.

Kep provincial police said they have identified a group who used the replacement Khmer New Year holiday to encroach on 4ha of flooded mangrove forests.

Police took down tow sheds measuring 18sqm and removed 100 stone poles used to mark land boundaries in an area inhabited by a community of fishermen in Angkorl village, in Damnak Changaur district’s Angkorl commune.

Provincial administration spokesman Ros Udong told The Post on Monday that having received information on the case, Kep provincial governor Som Piseth instructed officials to inspect the location.

The Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Edwin Dikoloti last week told Parliament that Botswana is making strides in living the Malabo Declaration.
Dikoloti was responding to a question from Member of Parliament for Jwaneng-Mabutsane, Mephato Reatile who had asked the Minister when government would sign the Malabo Declaration.

The Declaration is a set of concrete agriculture goals to be attained by 2025 that was adopted at the African Union (AU) Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea in June 2014 by Heads of State and Government.

According to a 2017 research paper titled “An Assessment of Public-Private Partnerships in Land Servicing and Housing Delivery”, the pressure on municipal and central governments to allocate adequate attention and finance to house urban populations, especially the poor has been on the rise.

A Prominent leader of thought in the Niger Delta region, and President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Dr. Moses Taiga, has dismissed hope of a positive outcome of the ongoing probe of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by the National Assembly. In this interview, he described the drama occasioned by the exercise as a reflection of the bane of leadership crippling the agency, blaming the successive administrations for their wrong appointments.

The World Food Programme said on Friday it was rapidly scaling up operations in Democratic Republic of Congo with millions facing "the world's second biggest hunger emergency."

The United Nations agency said it needed $172 million to prevent millions from plunging deeper into hunger over the next six months.

"WFP is ramping up operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet increasing needs - a consequence of escalating conflict and displacement, disease, extreme poverty, poor harvests and COVID-19," spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs told reporters.

Monday, 10 August 2020 marked an important day for indigenous communities from Busra commune in Cambodia as they signed an agreement with the rubber company Socfin Cambodia to settle a long-lasting dispute about their communal and spiritual lands. 

The government is donating 168ha in Botum Sakor National Park in Koh Kong to the Royal Group to build a 700MW coal-fired power plant.

A sub-decree obtained by The Post on Sunday said the Ministry of Environment has to work in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance and others to prepare the deal.

The Post could not contact Royal Group chairman Neak Oknha Kith Meng for comment about the size of the investment.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) guidelines is to address key challenges in the fishing sector.

The VGGT guidelines were unanimously endorsed on May 11, 2012 by the UN Committee on World Food Security as an international instrument that can be used by many different actors to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forest.

It is a voluntary and not legally binding instrument.