This report synthesizes the findings from field research on land and natural resource tenure in 11 administrative clan units (henceforth referred to as „clans‟) in Liberia, including Ding, Dobli, Gbanshay, Little Kola, Mana, Motor Road, Saykleken, Tengia, Upper Workor, Ylan, and the community of Nitrian. The report presents an analysis of critical implications of the findings of the study and provides recommendations for addressing sources of tenure insecurity faced by rural communities in Liberia.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

* The Burma Army is currently attacking within six miles of Mai Ja Yang, a city in Kachin State that is a refuge for over 1,000 displaced people
* The Burma Army is firing an average of 100 mortar rounds per day into this area and is receiving reinforcements.
* Over 40,000 Kachin people now displaced by attacks and more are preparing to run

This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in November 2011 by a villager living in a hiding site in northern Lu Thaw Township, Papun District. The villager described an incident that occurred in October 2011 in which Tatmadaw soldiers fired six mortar shells into an area in which civilians are actively seeking to avoid attacks by Tatmadaw troops; no one was killed or injured during the attack.

Significant progress has been made over the past decade or so in the development of policy and legislation that support the recognition of customary rights to land, with important legal rulings in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, South Sudan, and South Africa. At the same time, the strengthening of communities’ traditional rights to use resources has progressed through community forest reserves and community conservation areas.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a) a presentation of the diversity of land related conflicts in Africa, b) an analysis of underlying causes of conflicts and experiences in conflict resolution and, c) lessons learnt and best practices from the policy and legal responses and links with enhancement of land governance in the region.

Urban LandMark has developed a booklet that focuses on the creation, measurement and capture of value from transport interchanges. It also looks into the opportunities/obstacles to municipalities' use of value capture instruments. And it investigates the economics of value creation and value capture to identify the possibility of 'getting ahead of the curve' in securing these sites for more socially orientated development. Read more.

News, views and experiences on securing rights to rangelands from East Africa and beyond.

This document summarizes a legal and policy review of the Community Land Bill (Oct. 2011 draft), the Land Bill (5 Dec. 2011 draft), and the Land Registration Bill (12 Dec. 2011 draft) with respect to the recognition of community land rights. This review was commissioned by the USAID Kenya SECURE Project upon request of the Ministry of Lands and Land Reform Transformation Unit.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

This work aims to contribute to the debate on social conflicts generated by coastal development and the process of land tenure reform as a conflict resolution mechanism. We will present the case of the Territorios Costeros Comunitarios reform movement (TECOCOS) currently mobilized in Costa Rica and integrated by over 60 coastal communities. This reform movement initiated in reaction to a recent wave of planned evictions threatening specific coastal communities on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, following a decade of aggressive coastal tourism development.

The Sustainable Rangeland Management Project (SRMP) aims at securing land and resource
rights of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and crop farmers, while improving land management
by supporting village and district land use planning and rangeland management in Kiteto,
Bahi, Chamwino and Kondoa Districts in Tanzania. More broadly, it aims at influencing policy