Thursday, 11 March 2021 from 13:00–14:00 (CAT)
PLAAS invites you to a webinar on “Exploring advocacy, research, and training on women’s land rights” featuring:
- Isabel Mario Casimiro – President of CODESRIA, Professor, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique
- Augustine Masinde – National Director of Physical Planning, Ministry of Lands & Physical Planning, Kenya
- Naomi Shadrack – Women’s Land Policy Advisor, Oxfam International
- Maggie Kathewera Banda – Women’s Legal Resources Centre, Malawi
The webinar will be chaired by land governance and gender expert Sue Mbaya.
To date, across the continent, many women do not have independent land rights, they struggle to access land, and many are at the risk of land dispossession. As a response to this challenge and many other issues in the land sector, currently, all African states have virtually signed policy resolutions to ensure more equal and less discriminatory land rights for women. The African Union (AU) has also embraced this aspiration and laid it down in frameworks and guidelines and other legally binding documents concerning women’s land rights. Notable among these are the Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa, adopted by the African Union in 2009, and the Voluntary Guidelines on Governance of Tenure, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGTs). Several initiatives are underway to realise the full implementation of these resolutions including the AU Commission, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and the African Development Bank campaign launched in 2015 to ensure that 30 percent of land in Africa is documented to women by 2025.
Despite these efforts and adoption of these resolutions at the AU level, research shows that domestication of the regional and international framework has received little political support on the ground and the majority of rural women remain unaware of these progressive gender tools. This webinar aims to deepen capacity for land policy development and implementation with a specific focus on emerging issues and African Union’s commitments including tackling women’s rights issues in the land sector.
In this webinar experts in advocacy, research, training, and implementation on women’s land rights will discuss the state of research, training, implementation, and advocacy and suggest priority actions and approaches to better realise women’s land rights. The webinar will focus on the following questions:
- How effective is advocacy in ensuring that African governments adopt policies and laws in line with regional and international conventions which they have endorsed on women’s land rights? What are the priorities for advocacy going forward?
- How effective are African governments in implementing programmes to give effect to laws and policies on women’s land rights? What do they need to do and what can be done to help them do this?
- How effective is training in promoting women’s and men’s understanding and use of international and regional frameworks and national laws and policies on women’s land rights? What are the priorities for training going forward?
- How effective is research in documenting, understanding and tracking problems and progress with women’s land rights? What are the priorities for research going forward? Who should do what?
Tune in on Thursday, 11 March 2021 from:
- 12:00 West Africa Time (WAT)
- 13:00 Central Africa Time (CAT)
- 14:00 East Africa Time (EAT)