Seven months have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine, displacing more than 13 million people—one-third of the country’s population—and leveling entire towns. And yet, despite all odds, Ukraine is turning the tide against its more powerful neighbor. Ukrainian forces have staged a rapid counter-offensive, liberating thousands of square miles of territory that displaced Ukrainians are beginning to return to.
Land tenure—the formal and informal relationship individuals and groups form with land—effectively determines who uses what land under which conditions. Tenure security is important to promote rural resilience and climate change adaptation, build endowments of assets, and provide adequate housing. But land tenure security is not static.
Over the last month the news all over the world broke with stories about the departure of US forces from Afghanistan and its takeover by the Taliban. Many wonder what the future will bring to those who remained and to those who fled the country. This thought immediately raises all sorts of questions which include 'what will happen to access, control, and ownership of land in states of transition?'
By Allan Cain, Development Workshop Angola
* This article was originally published as part of the online discussion on customary law in Southern Africa
A recent paper explores a case study of a palm oil project in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, in which competing claims of recognition and land rights have led to conflict between transmigrants and indigenous Kutai people. The study offers evidence to understand the neglected perspective – and recognition – of migrants in situations of environmental injustice.
Recent border clashes between Kyrgyz and Tajik troops, which have thus far claimed the lives of over 50 civilians and military personnel, are the latest skirmishes in what seems to be an eternal pattern of sovereignty-related disputes between the two Central Asian nations. There is a case to be made that the problems in the region, driven predominantly by each states’ respective claims to land and water resources, can be attributed to the legacy of both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s historical position within the Soviet Union.
Fuentedeoro’s Mayor, Patricia Mancera, took the world on a digital tour of her town. On Monday last week, Mancera’s team went live on Facebook, while walking door-to-door to deliver registered property titles to dozens of neighbors living in Fuentedeoro’s urban center.
It has been decades since Africa’s independence, and the peasants (rural land cultivators) are still suffering. How did Africa ignore the agricultural sector, after the peasants ushered the continent’s independence? Agriculture has become Africa’s “sunset” sector making the continent the most impoverished region, with over 70% rural poverty, heavy dependence on donor food aid valued at over US$ 51 million annually and high rates of unemployment. At least Africa is now embarking on agrarian reforms after years of neo-colonialism.
By Amber Rouleau, communications officer for African Women Rising.
Read the orignial version here.
SANTA BARBARA, California, USA, Nov 8 2018 (IPS) - While its conflict ended in 2007, Northern Uganda struggles with its legacy as one of the most aid-dependent regions in the world.
June 3, 2019
Read the original blog here.
In early May 2019, it was reported that agricultural areas of central and northern Iraq were being set ablaze — allegedly by remaining pockets of fighters from the so-called Islamic State.
We meet Rosalía in a roadside café in a dusty town in the Quiché department, in Guatemala’s Western Highlands. She lowers her voice whenever people come in – you never know who might be listening. Land is sensitive stuff, especially in Quiché, a region that still bears, perhaps more than any other part of Guatemala, the scars of the civil war (1960-1996) – as we will see. In 2018 alone, 15 defenders of land rights in Guatemala have been killed with total impunity, several of them in Quiché.
