Five years ago people were evicted from their shacks in Durban to make way for housing for members of the African National Congress

DURBAN, South Africa - Five years ago Ndabo Mzimela was evicted from a cramped backyard shack in Durban to make way for the construction of subsidised government housing.

Those houses, he and other residents said, were allocated exclusively to paying members of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African ruling party that has been beset in recent years by allegations of widespread corruption.

KUCHING, Nov 5 — Works Minister Baru Bian today defended the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government against criticisms for not giving a specific allocation in the federal Budget 2019 for the perimeter survey of native customary rights (NCR) land in Sarawak.

He said the critics were implying that the PH government is not concerned about NCR land and not treating it as an important issue.

Baru pointed out that land matters are not under the purview of the federal government and nor does it have any say in state land matters.

"Despite repeated pledges by the authorities, the military has been frustratingly slow to restore land to the rightful owners"

BANGKOK - Sri Lanka has failed to fulfil pledges to return properties to thousands of people forced from their homes during decades of war, many of whom now live in desperate poverty, researchers said on Tuesday.

Thousands of acres of land taken over during the war are still held by government forces who set up security posts and buffer zones, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

Two events held on Tuesday, September 18 demonstrated an enormous divide between groups working on issues related to favelas and favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Both events had more than one hundred people present and each featured an influential global thinker to help foster debate.

In a watershed moment for land rights in Liberia and across Africa, President George Weah on Sept. 19 signed into law a land reform bill that extends land rights to millions of rural Liberians.

The Land Rights Act ensures, for the first time, that the land rights of rural Liberians are recognized, protected, and guaranteed by law – an essential ingredient for these communities to achieve secure land rights. Under the previous land tenure system, as much as 80 percent of Liberians lived without legally recognized rights to land.

Delayed payments of compensation for compulsory acquired lands by the state have been cited as a major cause of land litigation and inadequate security of tenure in the country.

Dr. Benjamin Armah Quaye, National Coordinator, Land Administration Project (LAP) explained that the yet-to-be compensated owners become frustrated by the delays and resort to encroaching the land, leading to litigations.

Indigenous alliance accuses Jakarta of dragging its feet in coming up with measures to ensure ancestral lands are protected

Indonesia's indigenous people have condemned the government for failing to protect them from "greedy" corporations that they say continue to encroach on their ancestral lands without fear of legal reprisals.

Last year, Tharigopula Sambasiva Rao entered into a deal with the state government of Andhra Pradesh. He gave up six acres of his agricultural land in his village, Sakhamuru, in exchange for 7,250 square yards—6,000 square yards of residential plots and 1,250 square yards of commercial ones.

The Land Portal is an independent nonprofit foundation based in The Netherlands. The Land Portal pioneered the open data revolution in the land sector and is committed to building an information ecosystem for land governance that ultimately supports better informed decision and policy making at local, national and international levels.

"Gender, Land and Mining in Pastoralist Tanzania" is the product of rigorous field research over two years by WOLTS team members from Mokoro and HakiMadini. Significant stresses from mining, population growth and climate change, as well as disturbing levels of violence against women have been uncovered in this study of two traditional pastoralist communities in Tanzania. Initial findings are based on repeat rounds of participatory fieldwork by the WOLTS team and have already received attention at national and local level.

"While agricultural output and exports are growing in the Mekong as a result of the concessions, the benefits have not reached smallholders and indigenous people"

BANGKOK - Companies acquired concessions amounting to the size of a small European country, while rural residents of Southeast Asia's Mekong region saw their landholdings shrink or disappear over the past two decades, according to researchers.