News on Land

The Ignacio Huilipan Indigenous community won back 97 hectares from a major Chilean conglomerate Tuesday, setting precedent for native land rights.

In a historic ruling, a Chilean judge ruled that a major national lumber company has to give back nearly 100 hectares to the Ignacio Huilipan Indigenous community the company had illegally claimed as its own.

Most of Zimbabwe’s economic challenges, including a ballooning budget deficit, a huge trade deficit and crippling foreign currency shortages, can be traced back to how the southern African country handled land reform, a leading economist has said. 

Zimbabwe embarked on a land reform programme in 2000, but came under fire for the manner in which it was conducted.

The country was a self-sufficient food producer prior to its land reform programme, but now imports many of its goods.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – A half mile from the din of the Global Climate Action Summit and its 4,000 attendees in San Francisco, indigenous peoples from around the world came together in a small space for a kind of summit of their own.

They spoke different languages. They wore unique clothing. But the tenor of their voices and the expressions on their faces conveyed a similar message: They are the “guardians of the forests,” not their national governments. As such, they have a vital role to play in the battle against climate change.

Monrovia – The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a local civil society organization that advocates for the participation of local communities in decision-making processes on natural resources, has welcomed the passage into law of the landmark Land Right Bill.

According to Ms. Nora Bowier, SDI Coordinator, the groundbreaking legislation will be a transformative milestone of the post-conflict era in promoting citizens’ participation in the decision-making process.

Human Rights Organizations have requested state officials launch an impartial investigation into the murder.

The memory of Mexican activist Jesus Javier Ramos Arreola will only strengthen the activist’s cause to stall construction of the New Mexican International Airport (NAIM).

The activist was dedicated to the defense of a strip of stony ground called Cerro del Tenayo, the location destined for the new international airport. Residents say the hill was home to several archaeological remains as well as diminishing species of flora and fauna.

World Habitat Day is meant to remind us to ensure the human right to adequate housing and land for everyone

At 5 a.m. on a cold December morning, the sound of bulldozers woke up Rukshana, a woman in her late fifties. By 6 a.m., her home in Delhi, where she had lived for 35 years, had been demolished and with it her meagre belongings.

Rukshana is just one of the world’s 1.6 billion people estimated to be inadequately housed, over 100 million of whom are considered to be homeless.

Paraguay is home to vast swathes of wild land — forests, savannas, mountains — but over the past 20 years, it’s lost huge amounts of that. Agriculture and development have deforested 9 million acres (roughly the size of the Netherlands) in Paraguay since 2001, the majority of it to enterprises like soy and cattle.

"In many communities, customary law is used as a tool to deny women their rights to housing, property, land, and inheritance."

BANGKOK - An indigenous woman in northern India is taking her fight for inheritance rights to the country's top court, leading others who are pushing back against sexist laws and customs.

Ratan Manjari, who heads the women's rights group Mahila Kalyan Parishad in Himachal Pradesh state, received land she had inherited from her parents - a rare occurrence where she lives.

This is the first article in a four-part series on the potential to apply the Community Land Trust (CLT) model under existing Brazilian laws to secure land rights in Brazil’s favelas.

Global land rights group releases roadmap for agri-business investments 

New digital platform provides step-by-step instructions for implementing international standards that recognize and protect land rights.

Twenty-eight years after independence, wealth in Namibia is still skewed along racial lines laid down in the colonial period. The level of inequality is one of the highest in the world, according to the World Bank.

MWINGITSA, Malawi (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Life was never easy for Salome Nkalawire but when her husband died the mother of four faced her toughest challenge yet.

She lost the small plot of land the couple had bought together and farmed in Mwingitsa village in the south of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world.

When her husband passed away, Nkalawire’s relatives would not allow her to keep the plot because cultural norms dictate that widowed or abandoned women cannot own land, even if they have a legal claim to it.