The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) released a statement on “Business and Human Rights: Corporate Accountability in Land Rights Violations”, dated December 25, to give an overview of the challenges in seeking corporate accountability regarding land rights issues.

According to the press release obtained by The Post on December 27, the CCHR examined various mechanisms available to those facing land rights violations in the country and the methods employed by communities to achieve a resolution.

Lawyer extols value of traditional knowledge and tenure systems

• Once covered in vast tropical forests, East Kalimantan, in the Indonesian half of Borneo Island, is today the most intensively mined province in Indonesia.
• Surface mining for coal has left behind vast expanses of barren land across the province.
• Under Indonesian law, mining companies are responsible for rehabilitating their mining concessions.

The Public Enterprises Holding and Administration Agency (PEHAA) accused the Benishangul-Gumz and Gambela regions of illegal land distribution.

According to the Agency, the land distributed by the regions was the property of the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) which took it from agricultural investors who failed to repay their credit and have since been unaccounted for.

The Agency’s finance director, Sewagegn Chane, told The Reporter that more than 158 rain-fed agriculture projects have been returned to the bank.

Good and responsible land governance and an efficient land administration system, including land use planning, are one of the pillars for sustaining food security and nutrition in Ghana.

It is estimated that five per cent of the total population in Ghana are food insecure and two million people are vulnerable to becoming food insecure.

It is further estimated that 68 per cent of the land in Ghana are used for agriculture, while 15 per cent are used as permanent natural pastures.

The Cardamom Mountains sit off the Gulf of Thailand in southern Cambodia and provide important habitat for a multitude of plant and animal species, many of them already threatened with extinction.

Due to Cardamoms’ remoteness, they had largely been spared the human encroachment that has razed much of the rainforest across the country – until infrastructure development in 2020 opened up the area to loggers, poachers, and others seeking to exploit the region’s forests.

The Energy Ministry has commenced a stakeholder engagement in communities with the Jomoro Municipality of the Western Region for the acquisition of a 20,000-acre plot of land for the Petroleum Hub.

Back in March 2019, Cabinet gave the approval for the establishment of the much-awaited petroleum hub in the Western Region to house all infrastructure projects in the petroleum industry.

Ministry of Lands has suggested that security feature which be included to land certificates in order to protect them from being tampered with as part of the lessons learnt from the pilot phase of the Strenghtening Land Governance Systems for Smallholder Farmers in Malawi peoject fo the review of Land Act.

Deputy Minister of Lands, Abida Mia made the suggestion Tuesday at Golden Peacock in Lilongwe when she opened a High Level workshop on lessons learnt from the pilot project on the implementation of land laws in Phalombe, Kasungu and Rumphi.

There is a raging debate with regards to viability and legality of the barter deal that was agreed between Malawi government and an investor.

For the starters, we understand that, to address shortage of housing among police officers, Worldwide Construction Company was awarded a K9.9 billion contract to construct 140 houses (i.e. K70 million per house) at Area 30 in Lilongwe.

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thai authorities have reached an agreement with a landless community that will allow villagers to live in a mangrove forest if they help protect the area, a unique collaboration that could work across the country, land rights groups said.

Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the government, human rights groups and about 45 families in the coastal town of Ranong, the community will not get ownership rights but will receive assistance in building homes and access to utilities.

The importance of a sound land administration system (LAS) cannot be over-emphasised.

This article seeks to examine the current state of the land administration system across all land-use categories in Zimbabwe, a general overview of the land administration challenges, with the aim of providing a policy proposition of how the land system can better be administered.

A Recent Victory

In September 2020, President Mokgweetsi Masisi amended the 2015 Land Policy to give married women in Botswana the right to own land. Previously, married women were only eligible to own land if their husbands did not. The policy excluded not only married women but widows and single mothers as well, which left millions of women affected.