The pastoral areas of Ethiopia are witnessing radical change in terms of both increasingly restricted mobility and access to vital resources. A cause and consequence of such constraints has been a move toward sedentarised forms of livestock and agricultural production. This is occurring in a political and socioeconomic vacuum, in which the customary institutions responsible for resource allocation and access to land are becoming weaker, and where the Ethiopian government has yet to develop a clear policy or strategy for resource distribution and tenure security in pastoral areas.

Este texto busca recoger los resultados de un estudio, con modesto alcance, realizado en torno a la relación de las mujeres rurales con la tierra, en un contexto de conflicto armado, en el municipio de Buga, Valle, Colombia, en la última década.

Includes inheritance: a key way women access land; local mechanisms: ‘custom’, power dynamics and lack of engagement; formal justice system: community pariah status and systemic barriers. The lack of access to land cannot be framed as a failing of formal or informal systems, but rather as issues with both. The key to increasing access to justice at both formal and informal levels is to address power dynamics and understand how they operate to the detriment of women.

The recent Constitutional Court judgment rendering the Communal Land Rights Act (CLARA) unconstitutional (Tongoane and Others v Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs and Others) must not be allowed to throw decentralisation policy making into disarray. Decentralisation holds much potential for lively, participatory democratic law making and enforcement, through which rural women can gain greater power and secure more rights. 

Strengthening women's inheritance and property rights can be an effective means of decreasing poverty and increasing gender equality, and thereby accelerating progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper presents two case studies from Rwanda and Ethiopia to illustrate the potential impact that advocacy, legislative reform and law enforcement in this area can have on the achievement of the MDGs in developing countries.

In 2004, FAO, IFAD, and the International Land Coalition (ILC) jointly published a report on progress towards the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), with respect to the status of rural women. This report provided an historical background to CEDAW and its Optional Protocol (OP 1999) as well as an overview on land issues as reflected in the reports submitted by States Parties.

Judy Adoko, Executive Director at the Land and Equity Movement (LEMU, Uganda) sent us a set of documents as a contribution for the on-line discussion "How can women's land rights be secured?".

Much of Nigeria's recent economic growth can be attributed to its non-oil economy-primarily agriculture. But the recent agricultural growth has been driven mainly by expansion in areas planted while productivity has remained flat or declining. This brief provides insight for formulating policies and strategies to enhance profitability and productivity of major crops across Nigeria's agroecological zones.

Despite the fact that nonincome dimensions of well-being such as nutrition and health are now placed on the global development agenda, substantial gaps remain in our knowledge about patterns and trends in nutrition inequalities in many developing countries.

In Nigeria, conventional financial institutions serve only about 35 percent of the active population, and the poor, especially women, have limited access to financial services. Private sector-led microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly playing a role to fill this need. This brief provides an overview of the institutional environment of microfinance in Nigeria, as well as insights and recommendations for better reaching this audience, based on focus group discussions and case studies of self-employed women in rural areas of Edo State, Nigeria.