lack of transparency in the land and property sector prevents individuals, communities and governments from unlocking the value of the property as an asset, and undermines policies and legal frameworks that aim to provide land tenure security, potentially leading to a misallocation of rights. In fact, land governance is ranked among the sectors in which people are most likely to pay bribes for access to services, according to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer.

Land registration and titling in Africa are often advocated as a pro-poor legal empowerment strategy. Advocates have put forth different visions of the substantive goals this is to achieve. Some see registration and titling as a way to protect smallholdersrights of access to land. Others frame land registration as part of community-protection or ethno-justice agendas. Still others see legal empowerment in the market-enhancing commodification of property rights. This paper contrasts these different visions;showing that each entails tensions and trade-offs.

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) 

Tetra Tech’s land tenure and property rights experts examine how weak land and resource governance can fuel drivers of violent extremism. With a focus on the African Sahel, this new issue brief finds this dynamic is especially prevalent when land and resource governance challenges are coupled with environmental disruptions, resource scarcity, or migration.

É importante destacar incialmente que não é possível compreender o processo de resistência em Casa Nova sem compreender a rede de resistência que se formou na Zona da Mata Mineira contra um conjunto de empreendimentos que ameaçava as comunidades ribeirinhas na época.

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).

Displacement Solutions was approached and commissioned by DFID to carry out research on the housing, land and property rights issues arising from the reconstruction process, with an emphasis on the planned relocation aspects thereof. Displacement Solutions undertook a three-person mission to Nepal in November 2018 during which time extensive interviews were carried out, field visits made, and film footage taken for the production of a short documentary film which has since been completed.

Property rights are a cornerstone of economic development and social justice. A fundamental way of understanding the strength of property rights is through citizens' perceptions of them. Yet perceptions of tenure security have never been collected at a global scale.

A deeper look at what the results of the 33 wave 1 and 2 countries show about urban land tenure security. This report compliments the Prindex Comparative Report by focusing on a specific aspect of land and tenure insecurity.

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.

Does ownership status of agricultural land determine farmers’ soil use behaviour? Why (not)? We investigate this old question using multiple methods and data. We apply econometric analysis to plot-level data to determine whether planting decisions differ between rented and owned plots. In addition, we analyse interviews with Austrian farmers with the aim of explaining (a lack of) differences. We find a very small influence of tenancy on crop choice in the quantitative part of the study, and qualify these findings in the qualitative part.

The Annual Country Reviews reflect upon current land issues in the Mekong Region, and has been produced for researchers, practitioners and policy advocates operating in the field. Specialists have been selected from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to briefly answer the following two questions:

1. What are the most pressing issues involving land governance in your country?

2. What are the most important issues for the researcher on land?