This study was commissioned to review the current land tenure systems in selected countries in southern Africa, to identify constraints and opportunities relating to tenure security and improvements in women’s land rights and to recommend strategies to alleviate problems.

Towards a Common Platform on Access to Land has evolved through an extensive process of global consultation that was launched in 2000 at the eighth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. It aims to stimulate and support public policies and country-level activities that improve access by the poor to land and productive requirements in order to improve their production and household incomes. Its global scope means that it can gather and disseminate knowledge and lessons learned from and to different countries and regions.

Land Tenure and Legal Pluralism
in the Peace Process,
Jon D. Unruh
Peace and Change, Vol. 28, No. 3, June 2003

This document calls attention to the importance of women's empowerment in all aspects of public and private life. There is a specific section in the paper on women's access to land and other resources that emphasises the need to understand the power dynamic and the effects of policies on the allocation of and the the control over resources. In conclusion, the paper stresses the need to involve all members of society, including men, and political leaders, in the struggle for women's empowerment and equality.

This paper describes some of the experiences of the Plan Foncier Rural (PFR) or Rural Land Plans and what they teach about the more general question of identifying and recording of these rights, including group rights.

Forests and pastoralism are in a state of crisis in the Borana lowlands in southern Ethiopia. State management has failed to control forest exploitation and past and present development interventions continue to undermine pastoral production systems. In this paper the authors aim to show how a fundamental misunderstanding of pastoral land management, and in particular pastoral tenure systems, has undermined traditional institutions and the environment for which they were once responsible.

This paper examines the impact of land reform in Vietnam which gives households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. The authors expect this change to increase the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term investments on the part of households.

This paper summarises the findings of a short exercise to identify land issues in present-day Afghanistan.

The analysis of land investment and tenure security usually assumes land scarcity. However, some developing countries have communities with land abundance. This article therefore examines the effects of land abundance for investment and tenure security. The author finds that in contrast to the literature, area farmed is a determinant of investment and tenure security. However, no link exists between investment and tenure security.

This document reports on a workshop held in South Africa in June 2003 to address continuing insecurity of women's land rights. It brought together a broad group of participants covering NGO, grassroots, government, UN agency staff, researchers, activists, lawyers, and women living with HIV/AIDS.

Land policies in Africa have often overlooked the interests of certain social groups. In some areas, traditional access and ownership rights for women, migrants and pastoralists have been ignored or reduced.  The rise of HIV/AIDS in the region has created new social groups who are vulnerable to discrimination by land policies. As new policies are formed in the region, it is important to consider why these groups have been excluded. This will help to ensure that future policies represent these groups more fairly.