The Uganda-SIGI shows that investments in reducing gender inequalities holdimportant potential to improve women’s rights and reduce gender gaps. Over the pasttwo decades, Uganda has achieved solid progress, courtesy of comprehensive laws andpolicies strengthening women’s political participation and land rights, among others.

However, gaps and challenges remain across some key areas affecting women’srights. Gaps between opinions, perceived and actual practices highlight the urgency to tackle discriminatory social institutions through a multi-pronged and holistic approach.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Land rights systems in Southeast Asia are in constant flux; they respond to various socioeconomic and political pressures and to changes in statutory and customary law. Over the last decade, Southeast Asia has become one of the hotspots of the global land grab phenomenon, accounting for about 30 percent of transnational land grabs globally. Land grabs by domestic urban elites, the military or government actors are also common in many Southeast Asian countries.

Up to 2.5 billion people hold and use the world’s community lands, yet the tenure rights of women—who comprise more than half the population of the world’s Indigenous Peoples and local communities—are seldom acknowledged or protected by national laws.

Rural and livelihood studies, alongside development organisations, are stressing the importance of gender awareness in debates over food security, food crises and land tenure. Yet, within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, these gender dynamics are frequently disregarded. In Vietnam, rice is intimately linked to the country’s food security. Over the last decade, rice export levels, production methods, and local and global market prices have remained constant preoccupations for governmental and development agencies.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This report highlights important dimensions of food security in rural Lao PDR, including: the different gender roles in agriculture; reliance on community-level social cohesion as both a coping mechanism and means of livelihood; and the ongoing challenge of shifting rural livelihoods from a subsistence basis towards market-orientation. The findings of this report give a snapshot of rural livelihoods and practice.

What is the legacy of armed conflict on the roles and experiences of women in Africa? This collection of reports, testimonies and analyses portrays the diverse experiences of women all over Africa who have lived through civil wars, apartheid, genocide and gendered political violence such as rape. Contributions include discussions of violence against women in Rwanda, Chad and Liberia; the involvement of and impact on women of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and the increase in violence against women caused by the proliferation of SALW.

Because of their lower social and economic status, as well as physiological needs, women are often more vulnerable to nutritional problems. When it comes to sharing food resources in the home, women and girls can lose out. Indeed, the full realisation of the right to food for women depends on parallel achievements in the right to health, education, access to information and access to resources such as land.

Do women have effective land rights in practice? Research and policy have only recently begun to engage with the need for women to have independent rights to fields of their own. What needs to be done? Four areas for action are identified with associated strategies: improve women's claims on private land (e. g. through gender equal inheritance laws); improve women's access to public land (e.g. through land reform schemes); improve women's access to land via the market (e.g. through subsidised credit); and improve the viability of women's farming efforts (e.g.

What are the links between HIV/AIDS and women's property rights in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)? This paper asks if women's lack of rights increases household poverty and their own vulnerability to infection, and if securing these rights can reduce the impacts of the epidemic on poverty. The paper notes that gender inequality in land ownership is common in SSA, due to male preference in inheritance, male bias in state programmes of land distribution, and gender inequality in the land market.

Women's access to land is a fundamental factor in food security. Yet women all over the world suffer under discriminatory property and inheritance laws and customary practices which restrict their rights over the land on which they live and work. Articles 15 and 16 of CEDAW state the rights of women to property and inheritance. This report is a tool to help non-governmental organisations and multilateral agencies in advocacy and policy dialogue using CEDAW and the Optional Protocol (which allows individuals and groups to make complaints directly to the CEDAW committee).

Previously in China, all land was controlled by the communes. Over the past twenty years, with the break up of the communes, new land tenure arrangements have given greater control over land to individual households. This essay argues that recent transfers in land tenure between households have caused women to lose rights and decision making power over land, as well as possibilities to benefit from land. Men's migration to cities has caused a 'feminisation' of agriculture which fuels a market for tenure transfer.

How can the abstract principles of the human rights-based approach (HRBA) be translated into practical strategies to improve women's ownership and access to land? In Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, despite changes in national law and policy aiming to improve women's land tenure, none of the land reforms meet human rights standards. This is because legal regulation of land blurs with customary laws mostly relating to land transactions and family, marriage or inheritance.