Since last year, 35,000 people in Uganda’s Kiryandongo district were forced from their lands to make way for large-scale farming, including at gunpoint and by a sugar firm with international backing

Globally, the UN estimates that 1.6 billion people struggle to find adequate housing. Kenya’s Constitution Article 43(1) (b), provides that ‘every person has the right to accessible and adequate housing and reasonable standards of sanitation’. Kenyans suffer insecurity of tenure and are victims of frequent forceful evictions. This is a country that never follows up on building standards, leave alone rent controls. The current leadership is money-minded and has no interest in public housing.

Matito Leruso was born and raised in the herding community of Lengurma in Isiolo County. Communal grazing land has been central to her community’s livelihood, wellbeing, and identity for generations, but they have never had their legal rights to govern it recognized. None of Kenya’s thousands of pastoralist communities have. This changed in 2016, with the passage of the Community Land Act. Since then, Matito has joined other residents of Lengurma in working to understand, use and shape the new law to ensure that their community land rights are respected and upheld.

At CFS 46, the Land Portal had the opportunity to be the co-organizer of the side event How the VGGT have changed rural women’s lives:  Key strategies and innovations towards gender equality together with GLTN Unit UN-Habitat, the Cadasta Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This side event brought together a range of experts who illustrated efforts aimed at ensuring women’s land rights through both formal institutions and customary systems.

On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and on the farm.

In a workshop with a group of agronomists who work in agriculture extension in India, I ask the participants to draw the picture of a farmer with whom they work. All but one of them draw male figures.

The land sector is in the throes of the Global Data Revolution, which, of course, has created opportunities as well as challenges.  Government data portals, open access academic journals, community mapping and other citizen-generated data initiatives create possibilities for inclusive and open approaches to data collection and management.  But how can these opportunities be leveraged for real change and benefits to citizens?

There is no doubt that the Data Revolution is upon us. Geo-spatial monitoring, citizen-generated and crowd-sourced data, almost ethereal and intangible concepts just a few years ago, are beginning to make their way into everyday lexicon.  More data are being produced today than ever before, from a wide array of sources.  In the end, this new and emerging data can only be of value when it is used responsibly.  Turning data into knowledge and knowledge into power is no easy feat.  We have a collective responsibility to ensure the Data Revoluti

By Chris Hufstader

After an audacious land grab by a foreign company, indigenous women in a remote Cambodian village struggle to regain their farms and sacred sites.