Covers gender and property rights, the impact of AIDS on property rights, laws, policies and programs to promote widows’ and orphans’ property rights. Includes women and children’s knowledge, life skills and participation. Concludes with lessons and recommendations.

Focuses on the social protection aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in southern and eastern Africa. Discusses the relationship between HIV and AIDS and agriculture, food security, and rural livelihoods (including children’s property and inheritance rights). Considers factors that render children’s property rights more vulnerable than adults’ property rights. Reviews literature on social protection of children, emphasizing historical developments, types of child social protection, and recipients and providers of child social protection.

Focuses on legal and institutional aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in Southern and East Africa. Discusses violations of those rights and how the spread of HIV and AIDS has contributed to this. Assesses some norms of customary law that aim to protect these rights and some which complicate and limit children’s ability to maintain their rights. Reviews and assesses selection of international and national laws. Identifies several gaps in law and policy. Reviews National Plans of Action for orphans and vulnerable children.

Includes recent research on children’s property and inheritance rights in Southern and Eastern Africa; inheritance, relevant legislation and policy and the justice system in Zimbabwe; research in Mutoko, Seke, Binga and Manjolo Districts; discussion and recommendations.

A contribution to the current vibrant debate on land in Kenya following recent upheavals. Argues the need for a radical restructure of the way property relations are governed because what is being contested today is not just property but power over property. Makes practical suggestions for genuinely local democratisation of land governance. Need to act on identified illegal allocation of public land; devolve, not de-concentrate, land administration and to the most local level possible; and vest radical title in real communities, not district/tribal territorial domains.

Critical shifts are affecting rural resource rights in Africa through widespread reform in land, forestry and other laws. The cutting edge of transformation affecting women is in emerging new provision for wives to hold family property as co-owners with their husbands, which could play a main role in revitalising smallholder agriculture. Recognition that equity in domestic land relations may ultimately be a prerequisite to the modernisation of subsistence agriculture in agrarian economies is the thesis underlying the analysis of legal texts in this paper.

State/people forest relations are at a turning point in Liberia. The crux of the issue is property relations and how the rights of rural Liberians to forests are treated in law and in practice. Central to the problem and the solution is the status of customary land rights. The paper tracks what happened to the natural rights indigenous Liberians have to their lands and the valuable forests that grow on them. It looks back at the treatment of customary land tenure over the century-long process of forming the modern Liberian state.

Chapters cover introduction and background; land tenure; housing; inheritance and marital property legislation; poverty reduction strategy; land management systems; implementation of land and housing rights; good practices; conclusions; recommendations. Argues that the challenge is to take the steps necessary to speed up full implementation of the Flexible Land Tenure System so as to revitalise the hopes and aspirations of the thousands of poor families living in informal settlements.

Examines the current wave of land tenure reform in Eastern and Southern Africa. Discusses how far tenure reform reflects a shift in powers over property from centre to periphery. A central question is whether tenure reform is designed to deliver to rural smallholders greater security of tenure and greater control over the regulation and transfer of these rights.

Newsletter of a South African research group looking at tenure security issues and legal entities, particularly Common Property Associations (CPAs). Stresses the importance of adapting rather than replacing existing institutions that already work. Provides a list of 20 research papers, conference reports etc which can be ordered by email.

Addresses the tenure fate of three commons: the 30 million hectares of pasture lands of Afghanistan which represent 45 percent of the total land area and are key to livelihood and water catchment in that exceedingly dry country; the 5.7 million hectares of timber-rich tropical forests in Liberia, 59 percent of the total land area; and the 125 million hectares of savannah in Sudan, half the area of that largest state of Africa. All three resources have a long history as customary properties of local communities and also share a 20th century history as the property of the state.

Covers what is ‘land’ and what ‘property’ in the proposed Constitution?; where is land covered; common questions…with some answers; what does the proposed Constitution actually say and not say about land?; so what is the verdict? Concludes that it opens the door to significant reforms and failure to perform could be a matter of challenge in the courts. Ordinary Kenyans will need to hold the State to account in devising appropriate legislation and programmes swiftly and with the maximum of public participation.