The recent wave of land deals for agribusiness investments has highlighted the widespread demand for greater accountability in the governance of land and investment. Legal frameworks influence opportunities for accountability, and recourse to law has featured prominently in grassroots responses to the land deals. Drawing on comparative socio-legal research in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal, this report explores how the law enables, or constrains, accountability in investment processes.

Includes understanding the commons, getting to the sources of vulnerability, recommendations – making the playing field more equal for the poor.

Includes the drivers of change; changes in ‘customary’ land management institutions – evidence from West Africa; changes in intra-family relations; changes in land transfer mechanisms – evidence from West Africa; case study of changes in ‘customary’ resource tenure systems in the inner Niger Delta, Mali. Concludes with implications for policy and practice.

The Ugandan government is convinced that only by giving everyone titles to their land will people have security of tenure, and it is investing everything in pushing this through. However, this policy is based on ignorance about how customary tenure actually works, and on some dangerously false assumptions about what happens when ownership of land moves from one tenure system to another. Violence and conflict have already been the result. Looks at less conflictual options to achieve the same goals and ensure that rights are protected.

Discusses highlights from a recent academic article exploring whether 3,000 bilateral and regional investment treaties protect ‘land grab’ deals and how these impact the land rights of rural people. Argues that, if not properly thought through, international treaties to protect foreign investment could compound shortcomings of local and national governance, undermining the rights of people impacted by the investments.

Examines the current wave of land tenure reform in Eastern and Southern Africa. Discusses how far tenure reform reflects a shift in powers over property from centre to periphery. A central question is whether tenure reform is designed to deliver to rural smallholders greater security of tenure and greater control over the regulation and transfer of these rights.

Covers world agriculture, a changing context; scale and geography of the phenomenon, key players; the nature of the land deals, process and terms; implications for local land access; conclusion and recommendations.

This paper looks at how married women and children are vulnerable to becoming landless. Should something be done? What can be done?

Contains ‘land grabbing’ starts at home; the commodity slide; the land footprint of international economic treaties. Argues that systemic action is needed to strengthen local land rights and voices in land governance.

Addresses the tenure fate of three commons: the 30 million hectares of pasture lands of Afghanistan which represent 45 percent of the total land area and are key to livelihood and water catchment in that exceedingly dry country; the 5.7 million hectares of timber-rich tropical forests in Liberia, 59 percent of the total land area; and the 125 million hectares of savannah in Sudan, half the area of that largest state of Africa. All three resources have a long history as customary properties of local communities and also share a 20th century history as the property of the state.

In many parts of Africa, legal services organisations have developed innovative ways for using legal processes to help disadvantaged groups have more secure land rights. Their approaches, tools and methods vary widely – from legal literacy training to paralegals programmes, from participatory methodologies to help local groups register their lands or negotiate with government or the private sector through to legal representation and strategic use of public interest litigation.

Examines the policies and practices on land of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). While DFID’s approach to land reform in the 1980s reflected the dictates of modernisation, formal registration and market-led distribution of land of the IFIs, this was followed 1997-2002 by a period where changes were made to move in the direction of a rights-based approach.