ABSTRACTED FROM WEBSITE: What is happening with the land and natural wealth around the world, and to the people who depend on them? How are people responding to these trends, threats, and challenges?

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The aim of this report is to improve understanding of how to mainstream gender sensitivity into actions that seek to support communities to address land confiscations. It presents the synthesis of two two-day workshops with a group of 12 men and 12 women affected by land confiscations from Taungoo and Htantabin townships in eastern Bago Region and Thandaunggyi Township in Kayin State. Therefore, it is important to note that the small sample may not necessarily be representative of gendered experiences of land confiscation elsewhere in Myanmar.

The webinar on the Gender Imperatives of Land Reforms in Kenya took place on 23 April, 2019.

This webinar featured key experts involved in promoting and working towards the gender imperatives of land reforms in Kenya. It was co-hosted by the European Union, the Government of Kenya, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Land Portal Foundation.

Moderator: Husna A. Mbarak, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 

Women need secure access to and control of land in order to realise their human rights. In order for the women to realise their land and inheritance rights it is important for the policy makers to have in place mechanisms and institutions to guide practice. This report sets out the status of women’s land and inheritance rights in Lesotho. The aim is to provide a consolidated baseline which can inform policy making, implementation and monitoring.

With 27,834 km² of surface area and a population of 10.5 million, Burundi’s population density is seven times that of Tanzania and second only to Rwanda’s on the African mainland (World Bank, 2014). Its population grows at an annual rate of 2.4%, and more than 90% of the population lives primarily on agriculture.

This report uses household-level data from 33, mostly developing, countries to analyse perceptions of tenure insecurity among women. We test two hypotheses: (1) that women feel more insecure than men; and (2) that increasing statutory protections for women, for instance by issuing joint named titles or making inheritance law more gender equal, increases de facto tenure security.

In October 2016, women farmers from 22 countries across Africa climbed the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro to claim women’s rights for access to and control over land and natural resources. This event coincided with the launch of a campaign of the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) to reach the target of having 30 percent of all registered land in the name of women by 2025 and to embed women’s land rights into the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights developed the Women’s Land Tenure Framework to assist anyone who is interested in understanding the complex issues associated with women’s land rights — officials, grassroots organizations, international technical advisers, policymakers, development practitioners, women’s rights advocates, land rights advocates, people who are developing programs to assist women farmers, people who are concerned with food security, and others.

We must agree as a nation, that several mistakes have been made in our land deals in recent years. We were stampeding in the wrong direction without adequately consulting beneficiaries i.e. those who are directly affected, those individuals and groups who suffer if anything goes wrong. They are also seen but not heard i.e. the voiceless and marginalized living in the rural areas. 

This training package provides an introduction to the important, complex, and sometimes daunting theme of improving land governance as a means to enhance gender equality and grassroots participation in land matters.

The Tenure Guidelines aim to serve as a reference, providing guidance to improve the governance of land, fisheries and forests so that it can contribute effectively to securing the right to adequate food. The Guidelines thus constitute an internationally agreed upon normative standard that assesses the actions and omissions of states, UN agencies as well as international organisations with respect to the way they regulate land, fisheries and forests in specific situations. See box 1 below.