This report contains the results of a study of gender and access to forest and tree resources, women and men’s use of common lands and botanical resources, and the importance of these resources for the livelihoods of people in highland Ethiopia.

This joint FAO-World Bank publication aims to draw attention to the negative impacts of weak governance in land administration and to point out the manifold benefits of good governance in the protection of property rights and the development of efficient land and property markets. It provides positive examples of good practices from around the world, as well as an overview of principles and key questions to be applied in any country for the evaluation of governance in land administration.

This paper focuses on legal and institutional aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in Southern and East Africa. Chapter 2 discusses violations of children’s property and inheritance rights and discusses how the spread of HIV/AIDS has contributed to the violations. Chapter 3 assesses several norms of customary law that aim to protect children’s property and inheritance rights as well as the current practices of customary law that—in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic—serve to complicate and limit children’s ability to maintain their rights.

Issues of transformative change in gender relations have been on the development agenda for four decades and no-one could say that there have not been significant policy initiatives taken to achieve this objective. The enthusiasm generated during the 1975 International Year for Women and throughout the UN international Women’s Decade from 1976-1985 is undeniable and the achievements are clear.

Este manual de formación se centra en cómo gestionar y resolver conflictos sobre los derechos de tenencia de la tierra, la seguridad de la tenencia y el acceso a la tierra en el campo del desarrollo rural. Resulta de las actividades complementarias realizadas con el Programa de apoyo a los medios de vida, de la FAO, (LSP) y la Unidad de Gestión y Tenencia de la Tierra y con la Coalición Internacional para el Acceso a la Tierra.

FAO’s Land Tenure Notes provide information on land tenure in a format that can be used by grassroots organizations which work with small farmers and others in rural communities. Improving secure access to land by the rural poor is essential in order to reduce poverty and hunger and to promote sustainable rural development. Improving people’s knowledge of their rights to land is an important part of making rights real, thereby allowing people to improve their livelihoods.

The present paper seeks to cover the key issues, trends, constraints, challenges, knowledge gaps and policy options on a range of dimensions of land access. Land access is broadly defined as the processes by which people individually or collectively gain rights and opportunities to occupy and utilise land (primarily for productive purposes but also other economic and social purposes) on a temporary or permanent basis.

Most of the world’s poor work in the “informal economy” – outside of recognized and enforceable rules. Thus, even though most have assets of some kind, they have no way to document their possessions because they lack formal access to legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts and permits.

This paper identifies the key issues of land tenure security for the rural poor, vulnerable and marginalized in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The report finds that most of these issues are common across the three countries, both in terms of the challenges that the communities face and imperatives that inform policy interventions and responses.

FAO Notes sur les régimes fonciers 2