While there is no right to land codified in international human rights law, the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), provides for women’s right to own and inherit property without discrimination on the basis of sex. Afghanistan ratified CEDAW in 2003, without reservations. CEDAW (Article 14) also calls for rural women to have equal access to economic opportunities, to credit and loans, social security programs, and to adequate living conditions, including access to housing.

Includes key concepts for understanding land rights; land tenure and women’s property rights in Uganda; land acquisition in Uganda; who owns the land? Perspectives from the local level. Analyses how different ways of defining landownership provide very different indications of the gendered patterns of landownership and rights. Although many households report that husbands and wives jointly own the land, women are less likely to be listed on ownership documents, especially titles, and women have fewer land rights.

Yesterday's IMPACTblog included an entry by the Land Tenure Unit Team Leader, Dr. Gregory Myers. Myers, in his role as chair for a UN committee developing guidelines for land tenure, outlines the negotiation process, current progress and potential outcomes of the committee's work.

This short briefing provides information for investors and lenders on the importance to develop a due diligence ‘risk framework’ to identify, mitigate and prevent the adverse impacts of their investment decisions. It provides links to additional resources on the topic.

Major development in recognition of customary property rights in Kenya
Through its Kenya SECURE Project, USAID, in cooperation with the Kenya Ministry of Lands, recently developed the Community Land Rights Recognition (CLRR) Model, a process for providing legal registration of land held by communities under customary law. This is the first recognition of land owned as a result of customary usage in Kenya and will promote investment, better natural resource management and, in some parts of the country, reduce land grabbing.

USAID's property rights project in Timor Leste plays a key role in helping settle land disputes on the small island in Southeast Asia. A recent article written by IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, describes the history of conflict surrounding land by highlighting one woman's story and outlining current progress to establishing land rights.
To read the full article, click here.

U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies in RomeOctober 19, 2011 ROME – The United States government commends the United Nations Committee on Food Security (CFS) for the extraordinary work that it has done on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Lands, Fisheries and Forests, achieving consensus on approximately seventy percent of the document during the July and October negotiations. The U.S.

The Kenya SECURE Project efforts were bolstered recently by two news articles which appeared in the Kenya national newspaper, The Daily Nation. The articles underscored the attempted expropriation of land that had previously been gazetted for two national reserves for conservation purposes.
Kenya Wildlife Service Defends Reserves from Expropriation

Land questions have invigorated agrarian studies and economic history, with particular emphases on its control, since Marx. Words such as ‘exclusion’, ‘alienation’, ‘expropriation’, ‘dispossession’, and ‘violence’ describe processes that animate land histories and those of resources, property rights, and territories created, extracted, produced, or protected on land. Primitive and on-going forms of accumulation, frontiers, enclosures, territories, grabs, and racializations have all been associated with mechanisms for land control.

A work in progress: a video account of the development of IKM vines, with background and explanations of the terms used in this technical development.
 

Ministerial Order N° 009/16.1 of 23/8/2011 Determining the Procedure to Obtain Freehold Land Title. Published on the 5 September 2011.

How a little-known U.S. program is helping two African nations meet their KP requirements.
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