The workshop was held in Lusaka as part of FAO’s initiative in the area of women’s property rights in the context of HIV and AIDS. Report covers legal issues of, and lessons on, women’s land and property rights in Zambia; Theresa Chilala’s case; testimonies by widows and orphans in Zambia; successful interventions to protect women’s property rights by authorities � lessons from the region; inspiring initiatives by women and grassroots groups; key recommendations; working group deliberations; press release; opening and closing speeches; strategic framework.

Report divided into 5 sections: inheritance and property rights; disability rights, HIV & AIDS, women’s property rights and livelihoods; survival strategies, nutrition, psychosocial support, economic empowerment, and self-reliance; self-reliance and economic empowerment for women in the context of HIV and AIDS; inspiring initiatives from the region (Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya). Contains a number of personal testimonies. Launched the famous T-shirt: ’property and a piece of land give women peace of mind’.

Includes the issue of gender in access to land, a major source of inequality; FIG declarations and guidelines are gender sensitive; why mainstreaming and what is it about?; ideas for an action plan including – gender disaggregated land data and gender sensitive indicators; understanding and working with gender roles under plural legal regimes; making socio-economic studies a part of planning land reforms and cadastral systems; developing simple, local methods of land administration; improving the gender balance at all levels in land administration; ensuring participation of women in impleme

Focuses on women’s perceptions of land rights in the communal areas of Namaqualand in the Northern Cape. Explores the links between patriarchal social systems and women’s conservative attitudes towards holding land and shows how current policy processes and legislation allow local customs to continue to entrench gender discriminatory practices. Findings indicate that women are disadvantaged by historical norms, values and attitudes, which afford them only secondary rights to land.

Includes key policy concerns and recommendations, the Draft National Land Policy of 2006.

Comprises notes from an informal meeting in Pretoria addressing the impasse on land reform in Southern Africa. The main focus is on overcoming problems and constraints, including on redistribution, tenure reform, the land rights of women, HIV/AIDS and donor support. Has sections on the viability of small-scale farms, post-transfer support, mobilising support for land reform, and proposed follow up. There are two main appendices; one on the status of land reform in each of the countries in the region, the other a matrix of current land issues in each country.

Argues that the debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed that landholding systems are evolving into individualised systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealised ’households’.

Contains chapters on formalisation of land rights; women’s land rights – a human rights-based approach; a market-based approach to land rights, followed by country studies on Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Over the last two decades, 200 million people across the world have been lifted out of hunger. But as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather shocks such as droughts and floods, and makes rainfall patterns less predictable, these gains are under threat, especially among Africa’s smallholder farmers. Agriculture is Africa’s biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster in the continent than the global average, decreasing crop yields and deepening poverty.

Research findings include: land rights in marriage and during cohabitation; daughters and inheritance rights; land disputes; land administration and registration; education and monitoring implementation of the Land Law.

Using household- and plot-level data from Ghana, analyzes the main factors associated with farmers’ perceived tenure security. Individually, farmers perceive greater tenure security on plots acquired via inheritance than on land allocated by traditional authorities. But collectively, perceived tenure security lessens in communities with more active land markets and economic vibrancy. Migrant households and women in polygamous households feel less secure about their tenure, while farmers with political connections are more confident about their tenure security.

Improving women’s ability to securely access land is recognized as an effective means to increase gender equality and advance other key social and economic development goals. Despite progressive laws in many African countries, gender disparities commonly persist in women’s access and ownership of land. Although legal empowerment of women can help to strengthen their claims to land, governments commonly lack the capacity to offer legal services.