Women represent a large part of the 2.5 billion people who depend on lands managed through customary, community-based tenure systems and are especially reliant on commons for their lives and livelihoods. They have very often limited and unsecured access to land and natural resources and tend to be excluded from decisions concerning them.

Describes how community-level dialogues uprooted harmful gender norms that hinder women’s rights to land. Showed that shifting harmful gender norms at the community level is crucial in supporting women to access land rights. Customary leaders like indunas and village headpersons are a key entry point for that shift. Change can be slow. But spaces for dialogue;critical reflection and support for action-planning enabled the indunas to not only change their own beliefs;but also begin to see their role and their communities in a different light.

Empowerment is the “expansion of people’s ability to make strategic life choices”. According to the UN, women’s empowerment has five components: women’s sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally.

Au cours des trente dernières années, un nombre croissant d'États ont adopté de bonnes lois qui renforcent considérablement les droits fonciers de leurs citoyens. Cependant, en raison de multiples obstacles, un pourcentage élevé de citoyens de nombreux pays ignorent leurs droits légaux ou sont incapables d'utiliser les lois nationales pour protéger leurs droits lorsque ces derniers sont menacés.

Les droits fonciers et les droits du travail peuvent se croiser de multiples façons. Les investissements dans les plantations à grande échelle impliquent souvent des compromis entre la création d'emplois et la limitation des droits fonciers. De même, les relations de travail peuvent comporter des aspects liés aux droits fonciers, par exemple lorsque les gestionnaires des biens immobiliers sous-louent des parcelles aux travailleurs afin d’agrémenter les salaires par une production alimentaire pour leur famille ou les marchés locaux.

This report summarizes the background, achievements and emerging outcomes of the Securing Access to Land and Resources (SALaR) project implemented towards improving land and natural resources tenure security for rural poor smallholder farmers, including women, men, youth and vulnerable groups in Uganda, Philippines and Laos.

Cette étude examine l’état de la reconnaissance juridique des droits des peuples autochtones, des communautés locales et des peuples afro-descendants sur le carbone présent sur leurs terres et territoires dans 31 pays d’Afrique, d’Asie et d’Amérique latine.

Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, (a) with legally
recognized documentation, and (b) who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and type of tenure
 

Land and labour rights can intersect in multiple ways. Investments in large-scale plantations often entail trade-offs between job creation and compressions of land rights. Also, labour relations can involve tenure dimensions, for example where estate managers sublet plots for workers to complement wages with food production for their family or local markets.

For more than five years, the Women’s Land Tenure Security (WOLTS) Project has been investigating the intersection of gender and land relations in mining-affected pastoralist communities in Mongolia and Tanzania. The aim has been to develop a methodology for long-term community engagement and capacity building to protect and support the land rights of all vulnerable people – thus to fully mainstream attention to gender equity in land tenure governance within a framework that would facilitate improvements in community land rights across the board.

Depuis plus de cinq ans, le projet WOLTS (Women’s Land Tenure Security) étudie le croisement entre les relations de genre et de droits fonciers dans les communautés pastorales affectées par l’exploitation minière en Mongolie et en Tanzanie.

Land in Ethiopia is held by the state, who acts as a custodian for the Ethiopian people. Even though it is the state which controls land ownership, farmers and pastoralists are guaranteed a lifetime ‘holding’ right that provides rights to use the land, rent it out, donate, inherit and sharecrop it. Everything except sell and mortgage it. On paper and under existing formal laws, women have equal rights to men as far as use and control of and access to land is concerned.