Abstract

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.

Includes communal tenure reform – a contested terrain; impacts of the legal challenge to CLARA; ‘rights’ as a medium of local struggle, advocacy, litigation, mobilisation and research agendas. Farm tenure reform – policies and progress since 1994; declining priority and shifting politics; why the slow progress on realising rights?; ‘rights’ as a medium of struggle among farm dwellers and owners and civil society strategies; agendas for litigation, research, activism and advocacy. Evaluation – potential and limits of a rights framework.

Identifies disputed control over land as a root cause of conflict in Eastern DRC. Focuses on conflicts between customary and state-run land tenure systems, and claims by some communities to ‘indigenous’ status which are used to relegate others to ‘migrant’ or ‘foreigner’ status. Waves of population displacement have created overlapping claims to land, and an ongoing process of refugee return is currently increasing tensions over these claims in parts of Eastern DRC. Examines efforts to manage this return process and offers recommendations for action by local and international actors.

Based on experiences gained by the 3 authors through previous research activities and assignments in different parts of Africa and reading of existing literature. Identifies and discusses what is seen as being the most important issues in the ongoing debate about African land rights and land conflicts. Presents and discusses various policy approaches being adopted on the continent to solve land tenure problems and related conflicts.

Examines the literature on Uganda’s tenure systems, including the legal and administrative frameworks and their implementation at the local level, analyses the relations between these elements and tenure security and discusses ways in which land may relate to economic activities. Implementation of reforms has been slow and partial. The literature shows that the division of labour between land administration institutions at the different administrative levels is not clearly spelled out and that they are often inaccessible at the local level.

Contains review of women’s access to land, research overview of women’s land tenure status in East Africa, harnessing women’s agency to secure women’s access to land, the role of intermediary institutions in increasing women’s land tenure security.

Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc.

Includes sources of differentiation among women – type of land, age, life course, marital status, termination of marriage, economic status, AIDS; policy implications.

Includes land tenure systems in Rwanda, the Land Tenure Reform Programme (LTRP), summary of the land policy and the organic land law, registration of eight million parcels in three years: a realistic ambition?, land tenure regularisation and housing development in Kigali, conclusions and policy implications.

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations.

Presents the experience of international development, wildlife and human rights practitioners, shared at a symposium on land grabbing and conservation in March. Land can be ‘grabbed’ for ‘green’ purposes, triggering conflicts that undermine potential synergies. Expanded state protected areas, land for carbon offset markets and REDD, and for private conservation projects all potentially conflict with community rights. Such conflict is counterproductive because secure customary and communal land tenure helps enable sustainable natural resource management by local communities.