Government and aid agencies are trying to regularize land rights through registration but do rural people benefit?
Mekonnen Firew Ayano is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African Studies at Harvard University
As a new report reveals a rise in the number of indigenous activists being killed for defending forest and land rights worldwide, Down To Earth poses questions about the situation in India
Indigenous or tribal people fighting to defend their forests, land and other resources in India are being targeted prominently, though not in the way one sees in other nations, say tribal and forest rights activists.
On July 26, 2018, farmers in Xai-Xai, Mozambique, achieved a milestone. They met to formalize their new farmers’ association, elect leaders, and prepare a petition to the local government for land. The association, christened Tsakane, which means “happy” in the local Changana language, was the culmination of six years of resistance to a Chinese land grab that had sparked protest and outrage. The association now has a request pending for its own land.
Sri Lanka’s civil war ended nearly a decade ago, but Maithili Thamil Chilwen’s barren plot of land still resembles a battlefield.
There is only a mound of dirt where her home once stood in Keppapilavu village in the country’s northeast; the rest is just dirt, gravel, and broken shards of doors and windows from her demolished home.
JOHANNESBURG: Thousands of land claimants are taking government back to court for failing to process old claims.
The Constitutional Court will hear the matter on November 6.
Admitting to have failed to comply with the court’s order to re-enact legislation within 24 months to enable processing of new claims, Parliament has pleaded for an extension of deadline.
Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga’s 2016 ruling interdicted processing of these claims, saying they were accepted based on an invalid legislation.
The Responsible Land Policy project (RELAPU) is being implemented in the two districts
Land conflicts are expected to reduce in Teso sub region after the German government and the Lands Ministry has come in to resolve land disputes and demarcate land in Soroti and Katakwi Districts.
The German International Cooperation (GIZ) in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, including local governments as well as Ateker Women Land Rights Partners (AWOLARIP) is implementing the Responsible Land Policy project (RELAPU) in the two districts.
The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) demanded the Tribunal of Bogota to halt a proposed reform bill on the Law of Land and to “protect the fundamental right to territory and previous consultation for indigenous people.”
In a watershed moment for land rights in Liberia and across Africa, President George Weah on Sept. 19 signed into law a land reform bill that extends land rights to millions of rural Liberians.
The Land Rights Act ensures, for the first time, that the land rights of rural Liberians are recognized, protected, and guaranteed by law – an essential ingredient for these communities to achieve secure land rights. Under the previous land tenure system, as much as 80 percent of Liberians lived without legally recognized rights to land.
One similarity between the three Asian economies, namely Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, is their success in becoming high-income countries after World War II while maintaining a more equal distribution of income. Currently the Gini Index of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are in the low 0.30s, while Indonesia’s index (a lower middle-income country) is around 0.40. Key to the ability of the three countries in maintaining a more equal distribution of income is land reform, which they conducted as early as the 1940s and 1950s.
For more than half a century, the indigenous Kaiowá and Guarani people of Brazil have been deprived of their ancestral lands, and consigned to small reserves where it is impossible to maintain their traditional livelihoods. Generations of these indigenous peoples’ lives have been marked by violence and vulnerability as they have tried to reclaim what, according to the Brazilian constitution, is rightfully theirs.
The government is set to take about half of the land in the area to build the world's longest electrically heated oil pipeline from northwest Uganda to Tanzania, leaving locals worried
HOIMA, Uganda - Ugandan farmer James Mubona, 73, looked pensive as he sat in a blue plastic chair under a mango tree next to three of his four wives, one breastfeeding a five-month-old baby, contemplating the imminent loss of his 22-acre farm to an oil pipeline.
Lands Minister Jean Kapata has said that her Ministry is still waiting to hear recommendations from the Traditional leaders on National Land Policy.
Ms. Kapata said that the Traditional leaders held an indaba to further analyze the draft land policy and come up with recommendations to submit to government for consideration.
She has told media that her ministry will not give traditional leaders a time frame but will wait to hear from them once they are done analyzing the draft National Land Policy.