Chiefly an agricultural society, India has a strong linkage between land and social status of an individual. Nearly 70 % of its population dependent on land, either as farmers or farm laborers and it is imperative to address the issues of land ensuring livelihood, dignity and food security to millions of Indians. Land reform was a major policy initiative in the country in 1950s and early 1960s.

This input by Dr Aninka Claassens Director of the Land and Accoutability Centre at the University of Cape Town was presented as part of a five day short couse on the political economy of land mining and rural democracy. It provides a detailed history of processes and events which continue to shape South Africa's rural hinterland in the contemprary era.

This report for public comment presents and analyses key issues arising from extensive interviews
conducted with workers on and off farm, individual employers, representatives of organised
agriculture, trade unions, NGOs, worker support organisations, municipal councillors and officials
together with representatives from provincial government departments. It sets out options for a
strategy to address farm worker housing and related needs.

Land reform and rural development are routinely presented as key components of the poverty reduction strategy driven by the State. The restitution programme occupies a particular place in the broader land reform programme as it specifically seeks to redress the land dispossession which took place since 1913 and to alleviate the impoverishment and suffering it caused. Restitution is a hugely challenging undertaking which involves much more than the verification of claimants and the restoration of land.

Pour qu'un barrage contribue avec succès au développement durable de la société, les populations locales doivent également en bénéficier. Cette vidéo de 5 minutes examine les défis relatifs à l’obtention d’une compensation équitable pour les personnes affectées par la construction de grands barrages, et définit les différentes étapes pour s'assurer que les agriculteurs expropriés puissent bénéficier d’un accès sécurisé à de nouvelles terres

For a dam to successfully contribute to the sustainable development of the society, the local populations should also benefit from it. This 5 minute video examines the challenges to obtaining an equitable compensation for the people affected by the construction of large dams and defines the various steps to make sure that the farmers who were disowned of their land can have secured access to new land.

After natural disasters, governments often relocate vulnerable urban communities in the name of humanitarian relief. But urban communities rarely welcome such relocation, since it frequently exacerbates their daily challenges or creates new risks. Indeed, resettlement after a disaster is often another form of eviction. This briefing discusses the situation in Chennai, where state and local authorities have been building resettlement tenements on inland marsh areas using centrally sponsored schemes for affordable housing.

An estimated 60 per cent of the world’s 17 million refugees currently reside in cities, where they often lack access to financial assistance and legal protection.⁽¹⁾ In their absence, displaced populations depend on participation in formal and, more frequently, informal markets for livelihood generation.

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a study on land conflicts between refugees and host communities in southwestern Uganda and their impact on refugee women’s livelihoods. Uganda has a long history of hosting refugees that dates back to the 1940s, when it hosted Polish refugees; Rwandese and Sudanese in the 1950s (Holborn 1975:1213-1225).

It is acknowledged that conflict over land is a major source of violence in various parts of Mindanao, particularly the prosed Bangsamoro region. Historical accounts trace the root cause of land issues and identity-based conflict to the introduction of the Regalian doctrine of land ownership by Spanish colonizers. During the American colonial regime at the turn of the 20th century, dispossession of land held by the original inhabitants of Mindanao accelerated, with an emphasis of titling lands for private ownership that clashed with the tradition of ancestral domain.

The World Bank commissioned this report as part of a set of studies concerned with the Uganda Demobilization and Reintegration Program and the Amnesty Commission. The study represents one element of the set of studies which included the Final Independent Evaluation of the Uganda Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (UgDRP), Reporter Reintegration Survey and Community Dynamics Survey, and a study on the relationship between the Amnesty Commission and its DDR Implementing Partners study.

Together with reductions in indirect taxes on food imports, cash for work programs were one of the main responses implemented by African governments following the food, fuel, and financial crisis of recent years. The main objective of those programs was to help the poor cope with the various shocks by increasing their net earnings through community-level work paid for under the programs. Yet it is unclear whether these cash for work programs indeed reached their intended beneficiaries and to what degree they generated other, potentially long-term beneficial impacts.