Stresses the growing body of evidence illustrating the positive correlation between secure land rights and food security and nutrition. Also looks at constraints to secure land rights for women. Enforcement of laws can be challenging. Women’s access to land through the state or the market is often limited.

Report of the Interim Steering Committee meeting of the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa in Harare. Contains summary of outcomes, background and objectives, progress report, network establishment, operationalising the network, planning the sub-regional conference, fundraising, next steps.

Includes views of land registration in Omahalya Village in the Omusati Region of Namibia, connection to the land, value of registration, protection from land grabbing and conflicts, investing in their land, women’s empowerment, the commonage. Concludes that the village is a promising example of the benefits of Communal Land rights registration. The villagers feel safer on their land, invest more, have fewer conflicts and more equitable inheritance.

Seeks to answer the question, where collective tenure arrangements are either being formalized or supported for the sake of securing the community’s rights to land, what steps are required to strengthen women’s land rights in the process? Synthesizes findings from case studies in China, Ghana, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Namibia, and Peru that assess interventions to strengthen collective tenure and ensure that both women and men benefit from improved land tenure security.

Focuses on communal land and attempts to better understand the intersection of gender, communal land, and land reform in Namibia. Concentrates on two regions that adopted different approaches. The Oshana region leads the implementation of the nationwide Communal Land Reform Act, 2002, that introduced the registration of customary land rights in communal areas, while the Kavango region declined to participate in this and instead continues to independently administer customary land rights in accordance with its established customary system.

Case study identifies good practices and lessons learned about including gender in a project designed to sensitize communities about the importance of securing land rights, build capacity of customary land secretariats, and provide alternative dispute resolution training to traditional authorities in the Northern Region of Ghana.

A call to action including: securing women’s rights to land and natural resources, including within communities; ensuring women’s meaningful participation in decision-making and dispute resolution related to access, use, control, and management of land and natural resources; identifying and supporting research and sex-disaggregated data collection related to climate change and women’s land rights.

Covers multiplicity and diversity of land conflicts; the formal conflict settlement and its limitations; definitions of alternative conflict management methods; key alternative conflict management methods; limitations of alternative conflict management mechanisms.

During the last two decades, local conventions have increased in the field, and are now considered as promising alternative solutions for a participatory management of natural resources and land. But what does the concept ‘local conventions’ mean? What is the contribution of these conventions to the improvement of natural resource and land management? Are they recognized by the law? What are their limitations?

Includes study rationale and methodology; land acquisitions and agribusiness in Tanzania: a review of the literature; legal framework and the policy on land acquisition for agribusiness in Tanzania; acquisition of land for agribusiness in selected regions; emerging issues and way forward.

Covers orphans in Africa; the problem of guardianship; the Rwandan setting; post-war situation of orphans; children and the law(s); orphans’ efforts to assert land rights – land dispute cases; rethinking care giving for orphans. The 1994 genocide, combined with the impacts of HIV/AIDS, created 300,000 orphans in Rwanda. Many are heads of households who urgently need land-use rights, but a weakened system of guardianship and increasing pressures on land often prevent this.

Contains sections on the effects on women of Rwanda’s civil war, the legal system, the gap between customary law and land legislation, research findings about Rwandan women’s rights, a number of dispute case studies, including methods of dispute settlement. Argues that a gap exists between customary and modern legal systems, creating both land access opportunities and constraints for women. Demonstrates the creativity with which women are bridging that gap in a state of legal uncertainty.