News on Land

By: Sophie Chao

Date: 12 December 2016

Source: Ecologist

Supported by state and national governments, palm oil plantations are advancing over the rainforest hills of Sabah, Malaysia, writes Sophie Chao. In their way: the indigenous Murut of Bigor, whose culture, livelihood and very lives are under threat as forests and farms fall to chainsaws and bulldozers, enriching loggers and distant investors beyond the dreams of avarice.

By: Chris Arsenault

Date: March 8th 2016

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

TORONTO, March 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Women in more than 90 countries still lack equal rights to own land, hurting food production and efforts to tackle poverty, Rwanda's former agriculture minister said.

RANGOON – Around 100 Sittwe residents called for the resignation of the Arakan State parliament speaker in a Tuesday protest over unresolved cases of land confiscation, rally participants told The Irrawaddy.

The land grabs in question date as far back as the early 1990s, when Burma was governed by a military junta. Seizures of land were reportedly carried out to develop an industrial ward in the area.

By PETER NGILA and JOHN MUCHANGI

Date: March 14th 2016

Source: The Star

Are the land bills being discussed in Parliament going to stop forced resettlement, grabbing and other land-related injustices?

(...) "Issue of unresolved land claims crop up repeatedly among the works that are featured in the “Beat Nation” exhibit. One piece of graffiti art, which spans an entire wall of the exhibit, claims in bright red lettering ,“There can never be justice on stolen land.” " (...) To read more see the link to the article below

By: Lou del Bello

Date: 12 January 2017

Source: IRIN

Living in the Kenyan slum of Mukuru is hard enough, but when it rains it’s downright miserable. Streets flood, sewage overflows, homes are inundated. 

After each bout of torrential rain, Nairobi’s largest informal settlement is left a little shabbier, a little poorer, the community more insecure.

By: Eddie Cross

Date: March 21st 2016

Source: Politicsweb

OPINION

Farm Compensation in Zimbabwe

On the 16th March 2016, the Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe tabled a memorandum in Parliament establishing a special Fund to raise and administer the payment of compensation to owners of land held in Zimbabwe under freehold tenure. The paper implied that compensation would be for four items:

1. The land itself;

An architectural exhibition at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg invites viewers to reassess their ideas of what housing means in South Africa’s rapidly expanding cities, to understand the tension between organic growth and state regulation, and to ask how we can work with what already exists in informal settlements rather destroying what is there and replacing it with the vision of some dist

By: Nicolás Ríos
Date: March 30th 2016
Source: Vice News

Sonia Navarrete, the owner of a small forestry business in Chile, was on her way home one day in June 2015 when she and her husband were ambushed by a group of five hooded men. The attackers tied them up and held them captive for an hour, after which they burned the couple's house to the ground.

The Open Data Charter sets out 5 strategic principles that all G8 members will act on. These include an expectation that all government data will be published openly by default, alongside principles to increase the quality, quantity and re-use of the data that is released.

By Bernadette Christina Munthe

Source: Reuters

JAKARTA, April 14 (Reuters) - Indonesia, the world's top producer of palm oil, will issue a moratorium on new palm oil concessions, President Joko Widodo said on Thursday, part of the country's efforts to reduce the sector's impact on the environment.