o presente trabalho e uma compilação de vàrios artigos que sintetizam os resultados de pesquisas de campo sobre acesso e segurança de posse de terra efectuados nos liltimos cinco anos em Moçambique. Trata-se de pesquisas realizadas pelo projecto sobre Política Fundiária -Land Tenure Center da Universidade de Wisconsin, Estados Unidos da América, em colaboração com o Ministério da Agricultura e o NET-Núcleo de Estudos da Terra, da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane.

An investigation of the potential gender implications of the shift from communal to more individualised forms of land tenure in the Bambara area of Mali.

These two important documents include obligations related to women's housing and inheritance rights. Under the Habitat Agenda, States commit themselves also to:

"Provid[e] legal security of tenure and equal access to land to all people, including women and those living in poverty; and undertaking legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies" (Sec. 40b)

The National Agricultural Policy of Namibia is a multi-sectoral policy with the following objectives: achieve growth rates and stability in farm income, agricultural productivity and production levels that are higher than the population growth rate; ensure food security and improve nutritional status; create and sustain viable livelihood and employment opportunities in rural areas; improve the profitability of agriculture and increase investment in agriculture; contribute towards the improvement of the balance of payments; expand vertical integration and domestic value-added for agricultura

The  Beijing Platform for Action, an agenda for women's empowerment, spelled out a set of objectives and actions to be taken by governments, the international community, non-governmental organisations and the private sector to overcome obstacles to women's equality. Amongt the critical areas of concern relevant to women's land rights mentioned in the document are the following:

The Agricultural Perspective Plan (APP) is a national strategy with a cross-sectoral approach with a duration of twenty years (1995-2015). Its goal is to add two percentage points to the country’s agricultural growth which would expand per capita agricultural growth sixfold, from its current 0.5% to 3% per year. The APP strategy is based on the acceleration of the agricultural growth rate sufficiently to obtrain strong multiplier effect on growth in employment, both in agriculture itself and in nonagricultural sectors.

The Act regulates return of and compensation for land expropriated for USSR Military Bases in Estonia. It stipulates that the land expropriated by the Republic of Estonia during the period between September 1939 and 23 July 1940 for USSR military bases shall be returned or compensated for to the persons whose land was expropriated or to the successors thereof, regardless of the manner in which the land was expropriated. Such land must be returned with all the buildings and structures situated on the land at the time of expropriation, if they have preserved.

In the developed countries less than 20 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. The rest is employed in the industrial sector. In the underdeveloped countries less than 10 per cent of the population is employed in the industrial sector and the rest is engaged in agriculture. At once this dictates that, for some time to come, the route to development in the latter countries will depend on agriculture, which also mainly depends on land policy and tenure. The land question is a contradiction in land rights and consequential social, economic and political abuses replicated on it.