This paper on agroecology and women's empowerment in Brazil includes a long section on "The Right to Land and Natural Resources in Brazil"  from a feminist perspective. It is published by the Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). The summary of this article follows. 

I am sharing this extremely important report from Margaret Sekaggya, the Special Rapporteur of the situation of human rights defenders (2011). In 2007 the former Special Rapporteur, Hina Jilani, affirmed that “the second most vulnerable group when it comes to danger of being killed because of their activities in the defence of human rights, are defenders working on land rights and natural resources” (Hina Jilani, 2007, Report submitted to the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/4/37).

Few days after an important report from the Center on Housing Rights and Evicitions (COHRE) on women's land and housing rights in Phnom Penh, another report on forced evictions in Cambodia, this time from Amnesty International and focused on rural areas. This publication tells the stories of five cambodian women who have faced or resist forced eviction from their homes and land.

You can find below, attached, a new report from the Centre On Housing Rights & Evictions (COHRE) - Asia on women's land and housing rights in Phnom Penh. Authors identify 11 recommendations for the Royal Government of Cambodia and 7 for NGOs. The report is based on a survey of 742 women interviewed, representing approxitemely 10 percent of the affected families in 74 communities threatened with forced evictions in Phnom Penh.

Whether viewed as “land grabs” or as agricultural investment for development, large-scale land deals by investors in developing countries are generating considerable attention. However, investors, policymakers, officials, and other key stakeholders have paid little attention to a dimension of these deals essential to truly understanding their impact: gender. It is easy to laud outside investment in agriculture, or to deride land deals and the accompanying processes as bad or unfair, without looking at the benefits and costs to local men and women.

Aid in Support of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (pdf, 1.5MB) published in March 2011, presents statistics on aid from DAC members to sectors focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment for the period 2008-2009.

The Global Donor Platform OECD focal point, Karim Hussein, points out that page 5 of this new publication reviews agriculture and rural development and interestingly showed that only 5% of DAC donor aid for agricultural inputs had a gender equality focus.

The present paper is written as part of the overall Voluntary Guidelines consultation and development process and is a contribution to the subsequent preparation of the Gender Technical Guide. It contextualises and defines gender for the Voluntary Guidelines, discusses what governance of tenure means from a gender perspective and identifies and analyses key issues and themes. It then summarises recommendations relevant to gender before drawing some conclusions for the development process of the Voluntary Guidelines.

[IATP Blog] In mid-September, I had the pleasure to attend a two-day consultation run by the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL), housed at Rutger's University (which, by the way, I was told boasts a freshman year this year that includes no less than 46 percent first generation university students. Kudos!). The consultation was the third that the CWGL has held with U.N.

Publicación de la International Land Coalition América Latina y Fundación TIERRA, punto focal del tema mujer y tierra de la ILC en la región.

The report considers the causes, processes and impacts of rangeland fragmentation on pastoralists in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Causes and processes include privatisation of resources, commercial investment, invasion of land by non-native plants, commercialisation including growth in individual enclosures, and conservation/National Parks. The impacts include increasing wealth divides and a growing inability to overcome and vulnerability to drought.  

The present paper is written as part of the overall VG consultation and development process

and is a contribution to the subsequent preparation of the Gender Technical Guide. The

present paper is based both on the outcomes of the VG consultation process to date and on

supporting research, consultation and literature review on gender and governance of tenure. It

contextualises and defines gender for the VG, discusses what governance of tenure means

from a gender perspective, and identifies and analyses key issues and themes.