News on Land

Indigenous communities across Malaysia face relentless harassment, intimidation, arrest, violence and even death as they peacefully resist attempts to force them off land they consider ancestral, a report by Amnesty International reveals today.

As UN Women hails the bravery of women’s rights defenders, we pay tribute to some of those killed in the past year

Rising misogyny and an increase in the restrictions placed on women’s freedom worldwide mean the work of campaigners who defend their rights is more important than ever, the head of UN Women has said.

The Horn Plateau, with its myriad of lakes, rivers and wetlands, has been a spiritual home for local Dehcho Dene peoples for millennia. In October, the Dehcho First Nations Assembly designated these lands and waters, called Edéhzhíe (eh-day-shae), as an Indigenous protected area (IPA), designed and managed or co-managed by Indigenous communities.

Between 2010 and 2015, forests around the Mediterranean have expanded by two per cent, but that has come at the price of significant degradation and increasing vulnerability to climate change, population pressures, wildfires and water scarcity, warned a new UN report launched on Tuesday.

A herder in Kenya's northern Laikipia was shot dead last week when police tried to confiscate his cattle

NAIROBI - Renewed invasions of white-owned ranches by herders in Kenya's northern Laikipia region a year after similar invasions led to deadly conflicts is a sign of cracks in the country's land use system, experts said on Wednesday.

A herder was shot dead when police tried to confiscate his cattle after they invaded one of the ranches last week, police and ranchers said.

The Joint Constitutional Review Committee has now adopted a resolution that Section 25 of the Constitution be amended to allow expropriation without compensation. If undertaken correctly structural change in the architecture of the legislation and its institutions, as proposed by the High Level Panel, and testing the current Constitution, may together produce far greater results than if undertaken separately or in a disconnected process. 

'Children should be a focus of urban planning, yet in many cities they are forgotten'

LONDON - Millions of poor urban children are more likely to die before their fifth birthday than those living in rural areas, according to a U.N. study out on Tuesday that challenges popular assumptions behind the global urbanisation trend.

Rapid emissions turnaround needed to keep global warming at less than 2C, report suggests

The promise of instant cash meant developers were able to tempt Maasai to sell their ancestral land, often far below market value

KAJIADO, Kenya - Five years after Naponi Taiko's husband died, his relatives chased her and the couple's two children off their parcel of land in southern Kenya.

Back then, Taiko was in her late teens. Today, aged 44 and with a further three children, she works in a bar in one of the rugged entertainment joints that dot Kajiado, a town about 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of the capital Nairobi.

In partnership with innovative local land rights organisations, Namati supports communities to protect, document, and defend their customary and indigenous land rights.

Julius Nkhata, a local villager, says the increasingly dramatic seasonal dry-out of the lake - blamed by experts on man-made climate change - has displaced local people and increased joblessness.

KACHULU – Just four months ago, the fishing harbour at Kachulu on the western shores of Lake Chilwa in Malawi was bustling with fishermen and traders haggling over the catch of the day.

For rural communities in the highlands of eastern Africa, water for domestic use is not piped. They have to collect, or use it from springs or rivers and it’s accessible to anyone.