In theory, South Africa has strong laws to protect the property ownership and inheritance rights of all women. However, a 2018 study conducted by Bongi Owusu for her master’s dissertation in social science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal found that these laws are often not implemented in rural Zulu-speaking communities. She explains how this prejudices widows in particular.

When a Zulu woman’s husband dies, she is relegated to sitting quietly on a mattress in the corner of a room while other people are allowed to help themselves to her late spouse’s land and other possessions.

Riding a populist backlash against the elite, President Rodrigo Duterte vowed to rescue landless peasants from poverty. Instead, he has reinforced the monopolistic grip of landowners.

SAGAY CITY, Philippines — On the day the gunman murdered her husband, Elza Balayo was planning a treat for her five children, a fish to accompany the rice that was typically their sole lunch.

The following story is developed from remarks at TEDxJakarta 2019.

Government vows to speed up return of confiscated farmland

The  Myanmar government has almost finished a review of farmland confiscated during military rule and will hasten its return this year, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation said.

When Manjari was 23, she was elected the first woman pradhan in her village as well as in all of Himachal Pradesh. She hasn't looked back since.

Ranked as a country most vulnerable to the impact of climate change, The Philippines is also the most dangerous place in the world to defend land rights and the environment. President Duterte’s government has enabled seizures of Indigenous lands by an environmentally damaging gold and copper mining project. When communities stand up to defend their land, they face threats, intimidation, criminalisation and even murder.

Experts attending this year’s conference on Land Policy in African have called for fair and efficient land management to support moves to transform the continent.

The third edition of the conference on Land Policy in Africa, currently underway in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan is co-organized by the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank.

Restrictions on land leasing in India have made it more difficult for marginal farmers to access land and finances, pushing them into informal leases that heighten their insecurity

Farming is a way of life in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, where three-quarters of the state’s 200 million people live in rural areas.

About 7 miles outside of Albany, Ga., Shirley Sherrod stands on a dock overlooking a tranquil pond, Spanish moss-draped Bald Cypress trees reflecting on the still green water.

"They're resilient whether you're in a drought or whether you are in a flood. They last. And that's the way we feel we are," Sherrod says. "We will last."

Nashik, Maharashtra: Pushpa Kadale was nine months pregnant and had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter when one night at 4 a.m., her husband asked her to leave the house.

With no money and no place to go, the then 20-year-old borrowed money from a neighbour in Thanapada village of Nashik district in Maharashtra, to take a shared taxi to her parents’ home in Gawandh village, 18 km away. Kadale was a farmer who cultivated the six acres her husband owned.

Mansa, Punjab, India - With a scarf around her head and a bottle of cold water in her backpack, Kiranjit Kaur goes door to door as the sun beats down on Kotra Kalan village, calling on women to join an upcoming meeting about farmer suicides.

Two years ago she set up the Kisan Mazdoor Khudkushi Peedit Parivar Committee, an organisation to support families of suicide victims, bringing together widows and relatives of impoverished farmers who - struggling with crippling debt - killed themselves in Punjab, the breadbasket of India.

From 'smart tractors' to better land rights, farmers need different ways to adapt

The effects of climate change are already being felt across the agricultural sector. Drought has left India’s farmlands crippled. Prolonged flooding has left many U.S. farmers in the Midwest unable to plant their crops. Elsewhere, cyclones in the spring decimated Mozambique’s fields and left millions without food.