Following initial enthusiasm in the post-war period, land reform fell out of favour with donors from the early 1970s. Nonetheless, sporadic efforts to redistribute land continued: Ethiopia in 1975, Zimbabwe in 1980 and a renewed commitment to land reform in the Philippines in 1988. These reforms stemmed from shifts in the domestic balance of power between landowners and landless workers and peasants, which were quite independent of donor policies.

This case study deals with the South African government policies for restitution and redistribution of land to people in rural areas who were deprived of it due to racially discriminatory laws and practice. Its main focus is on how the interactions between civil society and the state in the several phases of land reform through the 1990s reflect some key issues of governance, eg.

This report considers the human rights implications of the 'fast track' process of land redistribution in Zimbabwe, under which the government has revised the constitution and amended legislation in order to allow it to acquire commercial farms compulsorily and without compensation, and the land occupations that have accompanied it since early 2000.

This draft paper outlines a strategy for World Bank involvement in land policies. It focuses on property rights to land, land transactions, and socially optimal use of land.

How important is common land to rural people’s livelihoods? Are pooled resources a significant factor in household income? Why has communal land been so undervalued in recent studies?

This article discusses the World Bank's efforts to reform land and real estate markets. It argues that World Bank supported efforts at land and real estate reform have had too narrow a technical focus, at the expense of institutional reform.

Since 1994, the South African government has embarked on an ambitious land reform programme to redistribute and return land to previously disenfranchised communities. However, many black people lack the knowledge, skills and experience needed to manage their land.

Articles in this edition develop several areas and introduce specific experiences relating to land reform. The main thread running through the articles is that of change; how we can help to understand what change means and how it can be managed.

This paper examines the challenges of institutional, organisational and policy reform around land in Southern Africa. It analyses the land situation in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and identifies key issues for further research in each of these countries.
Findings include:

This paper examines the impact of recent changes in the relationship between landowners and tenants in Egypt.

This report details the findings of a round table discussion on land reform and agricultural development in South Africa convened by The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) in October 2007.

This paper examines the cost of implementing redistributive land reform in the Philippines. Land redistribution has become the core feature of land reform in the country since 1972 with the approval of PD 27. The coverage of the program was expanded to all agricultural lands under RA 6657 or CARL of 1988. Consequently, funding for land reform increased significantly as government chose to fully subsidize land acquisition, distribution, and transfers. From 1972 to 2008, the cost to implement the program has been rising in real terms both in absolute and relative values.