Enhancing Tenure Security for Customary Lands and Natural Resources in Karamoja Region through Participatory Community Mapping

Developing Capacity Assessment Tool for Land Policy Implementation: Experience from Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda

Developing Capacity Assessment Tool for Land Policy Implementation: Experience from Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda

Land is central to sustainable urban development as most measures are only possible to be realized if sufficient land at the right location is available and affordable. The issues of land in human settlements are increasingly similar in countries at all levels of economic development from small rural settlements in developed countries to mega-cities in developing countries.This briefing note outlines commitments that policy makers in local governments should make and act upon regarding land issues within the New Urban Agenda.

Based on the experiences of Amerindian communities in Guyana, this briefing presents some of the main causes of forest conflicts in the country as well as recommendations for how to address these. In particular, the document presents the following points: 

• Lack of full recognition of indigenous peoples’ land rights in line with international law, absence of effective FPIC procedures and limited transparency in forest governance are key underlying causes of forest-related conflicts in Guyana; 

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In the last decade it has become widely accepted that insecurity of land tenure has a unique impact on women, particularly in the global South where, more often than not, women are the primary caregivers in a household. In Cambodia, where land conflict continues to be one of the most prevalent human rights issues in the country, this assertion deserves particular consideration.

Examines critical land issues and land related problems; the National Land Policy in the context of the national development agenda; global experiences and best practices in land reforms and implementing land policies, especially in post-conflict situations; implementation challenges; towards developing a comprehensive framework for implementing the NLP and the Organic Land Law (including a check list). Section on insights and lessons from global experiences.

Africa’s Great Lakes Region has in recent years experienced
political strife, armed conflict and population displacements
with severe humanitarian consequences. While these events
have clearly revolved around political struggles for the control
of the state, recent research has pointed to the significance
of access to renewable natural resources as structural causes
and sustaining factors in struggles for power in the region.
Contested rights to land and natural resources are significant,

Since the early 1990s, parts of Afri-ca’s Great Lakes Region have expe-rienced political strife, armed con-flict and population displacements withsevere humanitarian consequences. De-spite great progress towards sustainablepeace in all the countries of the region,sporadic violence continues in some ar-eas, particularly in the Eastern DemocraticRepublic of Congo (DRC). Conflicts in theGreat Lakes Region are highly interlinked,with political and military alliances, refu-gee movements, and ethnic solidarities ty-ing the fates of the countries of the re-gion.

This policy brief aims to inform policy and current practices governing land expropriation in Rwanda drawing on recent research carried out by the LAND Project. The brief elaborates on the legal framework and procedures guiding expropriation and on reported practice based on information gathered from primary and secondary sources. It then proposes measures that would potentially strengthen implementation of expropriation exercises countrywide.

In Rwanda, two factors make land a highly important and contested issue. First,
Rwanda has the highest person-to-land ratio in Africa. This creates tremendous
pressure on land in a country where most of the population lives in rural areas, and
where agriculture remains the central economic activity. Second, Rwanda is recovering
from massive population shifts caused by decades of ethnic strife and the 1994 civil war
and genocide, which resulted in displaced populations and overlapping land claims.

Agricultural production in Cambodia is concentrated in the northwestern districts bordering Thailand, on the central plains surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake and its river systems, along the Mekong and Bassac rivers towards the Mekong delta, and in the northern and northeastern provinces. In 2012, the total land-use area under major agricultural crops was about 4.015 million ha. Rice is the dominant crop, occupying about 2.968 million ha; non-rice crops are grown on about 1.047 million ha (MAFF 2012).