SUMMARY: Despite a centralized political system, nation-wide legal reforms, and similar high housing demand pressures, property rights have evolved differently in Vietnam’s two leading cities Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City during the transition period. Using ethnographic fieldwork and a hedonic price model, the study shows that the two land and housing markets price tenure ambiguity differently. The different price structures indicate the importance of norms, as socially constructed by local political interests and culture, in the efficacy of land title regularization programs.

The government of Laos has identified the eradication of poverty as a priority. Given the primarily agricultural character of the country, it has selected land reform as a core policy to reach this goal. The policy has two major aims: to increase land tenure security in order to encourage farmer involvement in intensive farming, and to eliminate slash-and-burn agriculture to protect the environment in a country still rich in forest resources.

While Vietnam's reforms provided some of the weakest legal private property rights amongst the transitions countries, cities like Ho Chi Minh City have booming domestic real estate markets. Interestingly, while most properties in 2001 did not have legal title, those on the market did advertise a variety of property rights claims. Employing a hedonic price model to analyse the pattern of prices at which sellers offer properties in Ho Chi Minh City, this study examines how this market values property rights.

The process of decollectivization in Vietnam, leading up to the 1993 Land Law, ensured farming households the rights to market their own produce and to transfer, exchange, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. These changes imply a reworking of relations between state, market, and household, but also within households. Although the allocation of agricultural land in northern Vietnam was relatively equitable, allocation by the state represents only one channel of entitlements to land.

This guide identifies lessons learned and outlines critical steps that countries can apply to their own rural land administration programs as they strive to ensure these programs become more gender and socially inclusive. The document provides a valuable learning resource to help governments and communities implement inclusive land programs.

Development practice over recent years in much of Africa prioritized formalization of land policies deemed to enhance better handling and use of land as an asset for social development. Following this trend, land reform policy in Ghana was based on a pluralistic legal system in which both the customary land tenure system and the statutory system of land ownership and control co-exist by law. The primary research question for this study was the following: What implications emerge when customary land tenure system and the statutory system of land ownership and control co-exist in law?

In Afghanistan, insecurity over land and water rights hampers investments in food production and irrigation. In rural areas, customary tenure systems, partly based on religious law, are the most relevant but suffer from weak recognition and offer little protection to rights holders. The land policy reform is on-going but remains slow. Moreover, land administration capacity is weak and improvements mostly take place in urban areas. In this context, land disputes are common and often violent.

This paper engages with innovative ways to apply participatory mapping techniques and the latest technological tools in fragile, conflict-affected settings to contribute to sustainable land use. In this paper, the authors describe in detail the process and purpose of a participatory mapping project in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and elaborate on the lessons learned so far. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations to take the process forward for greater sustainability and long-term land rights protection.

This article highlights the gender  inequality that currently exists in land ownership in Zambia. Zambia currently has two land tenure systems, both of which are relic of the colonial era. In both of these systems, majority of the land ownership is along patriarchal lines.  Research has shown that the attainment of  women's land rights can and could possibly contribute to the social and economic development of a country.

Efforts to thwart the trafficking of conflict commodities to finance wars constitute an ongoing endeavour. As specific approaches become effective for certain commodities, belligerent actors pursue new forms of exploitation. The trafficking of housing, land and property (HLP) rights in war zones has now reached a pervasiveness, lucrativeness and severity to warrant significant attention on the derivation of countermeasures.

The Thailand Land Titling Project is an outstanding success story of inter-agency cooperation and received the World Bank Award for Excellence in 1997. It was designed as a four-phase project over 20 years and will finish in 2004. The project partners the Royal Thai Government, the Bank, and the government of Australia provided funds and personnel, with the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) supplying technical assistance and training programs to the Department of Lands (Thailand).

Land Registration: Global Practices and Lessons for India has been authored by B. K. Agarwal,  having extensive knowledge and first-hand experience in land administration. It contains a comparative analysis of land registration systems of Germany, UK, Australia, USA, France, and the Netherlands.​ Laws regarding maintenance of land title records in four Indian states Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab, and West Bengal have also been analyzed. In the end the author has given his  evidence-based recommendations on reforms required in the Indian land registration system.​