Current interventions in land conflicts in the eastern Congo are focused on conflict management rather than conflict resolution. Land conflicts are part of a wider governance problem and need political rather than technical approaches. Conflicts over land are related to wider conflict dynamics, which are the result of an interplay between struggles for power and resources, identity narratives and territorial claims. There is a need for better donor coordination and more coherent land governance interventions, which should be integrated into larger state-building efforts.

Training volunteers to help their communities defend their land rights has proved an effective approach for promoting land justice in Tanzania. Report documents how Hakiardhi, a Dar-es-Salaam based research institute working on land governance issues, has established and trained a 600-strong network of male and female ‘Land Rights Monitors’ (LRMs) operating in 300 villages on various aspects of the land law, so they can help people and local governments to exercise and ensure respect for their legal rights in land disputes, particularly in relation to large-scale agricultural investments.

Includes land and reintegration in Northern Uganda, land hotspots, land dispute resolution mechanisms, Certificates of Customary Ownership, options of freehold and leasehold titles, commercial agricultural investment.

Tanzania’s land reform from 1999 has been evaluated as among the most gender-sensitive of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. However there is a gap between the legal framework and what is happening on the ground. This paper analyses the challenges related to the protection of women’s rights to land in rural areas. It provides detailed information on reform implementation experiences so far by analysing a number of government and NGO interventions.

Argues the need for long term perspectives on implementing land reforms, to address people’s perceptions and practices, to decentralise authority to the local level, and to mainstream women’s rights into every activity relating to land, land administration and land dispute settlement.

O artigo busca, por meio da análise da atuação do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (no Brasil) e do Landless People´s Movement (na África do Sul), analisar as formas emergentes que o Estado adquire nesses dois contextos sociais. O objetivo central é mostrar que nesses países, chamados aqui de não exemplares, é preciso que se desenvolva uma teoria complexa que rompa com o dualismo sociológico Estado/Sociedade civil.

El conflicto armado interno en Colombia se caracteriza por la generación de más de tres millones de desplazados internos, con consecuencias dramáticas desde el punto de vista humanitario y desde la óptica de la protección de sus derechos. En ocasiones, las razones fundamentales de dicho desplazamiento descansan en una dinámica de control y apropiación territorial con fines tanto estratégico-militares como puramente económicos.

Is it possible that populations living in precarious socio-economic conditions and in violent contexts, can provide a different security from that offered by the State and illegal armed actors? It is the question that this article answers, based on a research carried out in Medellin, with victims of forced displacement of the Commune 8, which works with a focus on human security and methodology from the bottom.

Este artículo busca mostrar cómo ocurrió el despojo y la concentración de tierras baldías, y el desarrollo del conflicto en Puerto Gaitán y Mapiripán entre 1980 y 2010. A partir del análisis de registros públicos, mapas y entrevistas realizadas en terreno, este trabajo concluyó que los mecanismos desarrollados por el gobierno para desarrollar una reforma agraria no garantizaron seguridad en los derechos de propiedad, desatando constantes ciclos de despojo.

En 1991, cerca de 200 indígenas Wounáan de la comunidad de Curiche en la Costa Pacífica norte se desplazan hacia Juradó, presos del terror por las agresiones propinadas y las amenazas de los narcotraficantes. Estas mismas comunidades en diciembre de 2000 (frente a un ataque de las FARC a Juradó), salen hacia Panamá; cuatro meses más tarde retornan a Colombia.

En el presente trabajo se analizarán las transformaciones en la distribución y uso de la tierra, así como las luchas sociales que alrededor de la propiedad rural se han desarrollado en el municipio de Cajibío (Cauca, Colombia) durante el periodo 1973-2008. Centraremos nuestro interés en la tierra y en sus principales transformaciones, pues además de ser una de las mejores estrategias para aproximarnos a la realidad de una sociedad campesina, nos permite señalar algunos de los fenómenos de recomposición económica y política más fuertes registrados en este municipio.