Institutional framework for land administration and management being a whole set of services that make the land tenure system within Kenya socially, ecologically and economically relevant and operational has generally failed to operationalise the general functional components of land administration i.e. juridical, regulatory, fiscal, cadastral and adjudicative, efficiently. This is because land administration structures and infrastructures are perceived as factors external to the land tenure system itself.

The Civil Society commends the Ministry of Lands for spearheading the important process of developing the Draft National Policy, and affirms that land is central to the livelihoods of most Kenyans and as such its access, use, ownership, administration and distribution are of key national concern. Thus, having critically examined the Draft Policy we do hereby make our position on the way forward on the salient policy proposals of the Draft National Land Policy document.

Urban land can be defined as a commodity that is traded or as a right that is used to obtain access to urban amenities. Both are important components of urban land. Land is considered to be a commodity when it is bought and sold freely and a right to which all members of society should have access whether they are rich or poor. This report provides an analysis of both the formal and informal property markets for urban land in South Africa.

Pastoralism has suffered untold abuses in the implementation of national policy and laws before in the incorporation of bills of rights in the constitution. These provisions allowed freedom of association that enable formation of CSOs and NGOs, some of which based their interventions into policies and legal issues that denied pastoralists of the rights to engage into livelihood processes through access to, management of, and benefit from land and resources entailed in them.

Conservation enterprises are commercial activities designed to create benefit flows that support a conservation objective. The Koija ‘Starbeds’ Ecolodge was created jointly by a community group, a private sector partner and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to help protect a critical wildlife corridor and habitat along the Ewaso Nyiro River in the Samburu Heartland (www.awf.org). Many conservation enterprises claim success mainly based on their noble intentions,

This paper leverages datasets and results from two separate studies carried out across eight Kajiado group ranches and offers a unique opportunity to look at emergent pre- and postsubdivision trends from an interdisciplinary framework that combines ecological, political, and human-ecological research perspectives. It provides insights into the following issues: the loss of flexibility and mobility for Maasai herders’ dues to subdivision, the nature of collective activities that individuals pursue after subdivision, and the emergence of pasture sharing arrangements.

This report is part of a broader comparative effort by the Overseas Development Institute’s Humanitarian Policy Group on Land Tenure in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations, which aims to inform and improve the policy and practice of humanitarian action and to inform related areas of international policy. It seeks to understand how land issues affect and are affected by violence and conflict resolution, what responses are appropriate and what lessons can be learned from specific contexts of land tenure interventions, both during and after conflict.

This background briefing reports on a study of land access for returnees in Rwanda, and the impacts of land access policies in the post-conflict period. It also seeks to understand better the roles international humanitarian agencies and NGOs have played, and how their performance can be improved. It is not suggested that Rwanda is typical, but rather that the centrality of land issues there has thrown up a revealing set of broader questions.

The briefing ends with the following lessons;

[via UN-HABITAT] Women’s equal rights to adequate housing, land and property are well elaborated under international human rights law but are often elusive in practice. This document is a reference guide to international human rights standards identifying both the substance of women’s rights as well as the commitments made by States with regard to improving women’s rights to adequate housing, land and property.

[via FAO] This report is based on the proceedings of the Technical Consultation on Gender, Property Rights and Livelihoods in the Era of AIDS, organized by FAO in November 2008. It takes stock of where FAO and its partners are in terms of addressing property rights insecurity and provides a proposed framework through which future action can take place.

This book explores the meanings of gender justice and the practice of citizenship as shaped by context-specific histories, cultures and struggles. It presents a conceptual framework and provides four regional perspectives and a guideline for development programs. The section on Sub-Saharan Africa in particular focuses on the the definition of citizenship in the female experience as more than simply a formal relationship between the individual and the State, but also involving her position in a family, a community and an ethnic group.

"In this paper we present the findings of a qualitative investigation into some dimensions and implications of policy volatility in the realms of natural resource (NR) governance and devolution in contemporary Sudan, with particular reference to Greater Kordofan. Our goal is to map out some aspects of the interplay between volatility, disempowerment processes affecting both state agents and the rural population, and certain problems of governance that are characteristic but not unique to Sudan.