A USAID brief, published to mark 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, reveals important lessons from land rights registration activities in Zambia
Landless women should be recognized as farmers, and given their due tenurial rights
“Small farmers feed the world” -- does this make any sense to us? If it does, then what is the paradigm shift and what has it done, or is trying to do differently, to uphold and promote this hard truth?
A new blog series featuring voices from East and West Africa will take a closer look at a set of principles we think strengthens women’s land rights. Here, IIED’s Philippine Sutz tells us what to expect.
COVID-19 and climate change are impacting all of us, but the dual disasters have a disproportionate impact on communities in emerging economies. These impacts are felt most acutely in rural areas, especially among indigenous communities and minority groups, and by women and others who are marginalized within those groups.
For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same. Access to land means the opportunity to earn a decent income and achieve food and nutrition security, and it can also pave the way for access to social benefits such as health care and education. A lack of secure land access, on the other hand, can disempower rural people and expose them to the combined threats of poverty, hunger and conflict.
How will you feel when you are discriminated against and denied privileges that other people enjoy? What will be your reaction? Have you asked yourself why indigenous peoples around the world feel they are denied their rights and left behind in development agenda? To answer all this, I had to look at the food security and tenure rights for indigenous women / communities in Africa thirteen years since the establishment of the International Rural Women’s Day
We represent around five percent of the population of humanity, but we preserve around eighty-two percent of the world's biodiversity.
Supporting women’s ability to own, manage and control land will help accelerate gender equality globally
It is depressing, discouraging, infuriating – pick your word – to see the scale and scope of abuse and discrimination aimed at women and girls worldwide.
Many Latin American countries recognize the property rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant people, but those laws do little to protect women’s access to land
Latin America’s indigenous and Afro-descendant communities are facing not just one pandemic, but three. Women bear the brunt of them all, which threatens communities’ very survival.
For those of us who have worked in development since quite some time certain stories have become a little too familiar. Whether in Latin America, South East Asia or Sub Saharan Africa, it is women and their special connection to land and water that are greatly impacted when the thirsty mining, hydropower or agribusiness industries move into their communities. The stories tell of loss of access to land and forests, of contamination of the water used for drinking, cooking and bathing; of the much longer and more dangerous journeys to get water and the increased vulnerability to sextortion and gender-based violence.
In countries like Ethiopia where around 80-85 percent of the population are engaged in agricultural activities, interruption of the land governance system due to the lockdown and social distancing is not only a public health concern but also food and nutrition security.