News on Land

NAKURU COUNTY, Kenya — Caroline Chepkoeh looked around her idyllic property, perched on a hilltop surrounded by green maize fields as far as the eye can see. A storm front was approaching from the north and the wind swayed the corn stalks and trees alike. The 34-year-old mother of three was bundled up in her winter coat. It’s colder here, she said, and it’s too far to school. Her two youngest children haven’t started nursery school yet because of the distance. “I still have hope that we will return to our land,” she said.

Johannesburg – Namibian President Hage Geingob earlier this week indicated his government’s plans to undertake land redistribution in order to address racial injustices in the country.

Namibia joins other countries in the SADC region which have and or are planning to undertake the process, among them Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Geingob called for a change to the country's constitution to allow the government to expropriate land and redistribute it to the majority black population.

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 5 2018 (IPS) - Rural women play a key role in food production, but face discrimination when it comes to access to land or are subjected to child marriage, the so-called affinity group on gender parity within the G20 concluded during a meeting in the Argentine capital.

IN SIOMA, Western Province, Lungowe Nyambe has been growing maize on a small piece of land for the past five years. In theory, the land is hers as she is responsible for managing it every year and uses the harvest to earn some income and have food to feed her household.

"Indigenous issues are often put on the (political) agenda without our representation."

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A record number of indigenous candidates are running for federal and state offices in Brazil's elections on Sunday, a trend campaigners hope will shine a spotlight on the lack of land rights for the country's indigenous population.

In Brazil, indigenous and traditional communities are fighting for their land in the face of threats from big businesses, mining and environmental destruction. In some cases, the peoples' very survival is at stake.

In early 2018, Ageu Lobo Perreira was on the run. He'd received word that his life and the lives of two other members of the traditional Amazon riverside community he leads were in danger.

WINDHOEK - According to the latest updated statistics, there are 308 informal settlements in Namibia with a staggering 228 000 shacks accommodating about 995 000 people in urban areas.

This was revealed by Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia’s national facilitator Edith Mbanga, who says this means close to 40 percent of the Namibia population are now living in shacks in urban areas, predominantly in Windhoek.
Mbanga made the revelations this week during the second national land conference while delivering a presentation on ‘Land for the Urban Poor’.

A Recent UN Declaration Offers Recognition of Human Rights in Rural Areas

On 28 September, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), meeting in Geneva, passed a resolution which calls for the UN General Assembly to adopt the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.” This proposed declaration includes a number of rights, and specifically mentions that water resources in mountain ecosystems should be protected against pollution from mining activities.

The expropriation of land without compensation is dominating debate on land reform, but speakers at a conference on land reform on Wednesday said there are deeper and more imperative challenges to tackle to ensure South Africans access to land. 

Changing the law to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation will have little impact on land reform unless the government first tackles systemic problems within its own institutions that have hampered land reform in the democratic era.

Organizations claim the reform would legalize lands illegally seized from Indigenous, Campesino and Afro-Colombian communities.

The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) demanded the Tribunal of Bogota to halt a proposed reform bill on the Law of Land and to “protect the fundamental right to territory and previous consultation for indigenous people.”

KOTA KINABALU: The Dusun Begahak people in Lahad Datu are crying foul over what they claim as unfair treatment of indigenous people by the state government, past and present, after their ancestral land was given to Felda.

Speaking to FMT, Robin Balud, a representative of the small community, said the conflict started 36 years ago when the then Berjaya government decided to grant 120,000ha of prime agricultural land in Tungku to Felda.

“Somehow, the land also included some 2,400ha of our native customary right (NCR) land.