Los mismos proyectos de desarrollo que se implementan con el objetivo de aliviar la pobreza, encuentran serios obstáculos al enfrentarse a una estructura agraria pulverizada. Esto es lo que sucede, por ejemplo, con los proyectos de riego en el contexto de comunidades altamente minifundizadas.

Report on a desktop study commissioned by FAO. Contains introduction; the context for land reform (the legacy of colonialism, women’s access, women in agriculture, HIV/AIDS and land reform); an overview of land reform issues and debates (policy issues, gender equity as a policy goal); land reform and women (case studies from Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe); conclusion (key findings and recommendations); synopsis of land policies by country.

Details the development of contemporary land rights policy and poverty alleviation planning in Mozambique, lessons learned from recent experiences of land reform in Zambezia Province, challenges and strategic options for future support for land reform. Argues that the land reform programme has now reached a critical stage with senior officials believing that measures in the 1997 Land Law designed to protect community tenure are obstacles to investment, and growing support for unfettered privatisation of land rights which would mainly benefit speculators.

Contains rationale for the conference, attendance, key issues emerging for discussions, major outcomes, opportunities for LRNSA, the way forward – plan of action for CSOs.

This paper discusses the development of a new Land Law in Mozambique 1 , under the leadership of the Technical Secretariat (TS) of the Inter-ministerial Commission for the Revision of Land Legislation (popularly known as ‘the Land Commission’). The TS began work on the new law in August 1995 after first formulating a new National Land Policy. The National Assembly approved the law two years later. Regulations and other instruments needed to implement it were completed in December 1999.

Argues that the debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed that landholding systems are evolving into individualised systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealised ’households’.

A wide-ranging examination of the history of the land question in Uganda, and diagnosis of land policy development, principles, and implementation. Suggests a number of concrete policy guidelines for a future national land policy.

Includes background information; government policies on agriculture and land use; challenges in land planning; landlessness, investment and market driven land planning; the Uganda Land Alliance work on natural resources and land use planning; examples of environmental and industrialization conflicts; recommendations and conclusion.

This paper investigates how HIV/AIDS affects land access, utilisation and control in Malawi, with a particular focus upon vulnerable groups. It presents findings on the effect of HIV/AIDS on land holding, household responses to HIV/AIDS (to ensure their ability to continue using land as a resource), implications for tenure, effect of HIV/AIDS on land administration institutions, and the role of national legal and policy frameworks.The paper recommends:Firstly, that there is a need to raise the profile of the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS to poverty reduction.

Brief overview of the policy background to the land reform process in Mozambique, and a very generalised assessment of the extent to which this reform is improving the livelihoods of Mozambican rural people.The paper focuses on the experiences of the land component of Zambézia Agricultural Development Project (ZADP) . It looks at the extent to which the objective of the new land tenure policy in alleviating poverty has been realised and have concentrated on the contextual, practical and conceptual challenges that have faced a provincial programme of land tenure reform.

This essay briefly explores South African post-apartheid land reform as a human rights issue. It suggests that land reform has an ethically, politically and strategically important interface with international human rights. This refers both to the context-dependent livelihood role of land and to context-independent principles regarding land ownership and governance, involving several types of rights (allocation, protection, provision, procedure and development). It discusses the merit and limitation of a state-centric perspective on human rights and development.

This report considers the human rights implications of the 'fast track' process of land redistribution in Zimbabwe, under which the government has revised the constitution and amended legislation in order to allow it to acquire commercial farms compulsorily and without compensation, and the land occupations that have accompanied it since early 2000.