This article discusses the inherent limitations of law in transitional justice processes regarding land grievances. Through analysis of the case of Timor-Leste (East Timor), a country marked by post-colonialism, post-authoritarianism, and post-conflict. The article shows how complex transitional justice regarding land grievances can be, and argues that a legalist perspective gives a limited view of these grievances, both for studying and finding solutions to them. The article employs the concept of ‘wicked problems’ to overcome the limitations of law.

According to the current land policy of Ethiopia, rural households are legally allowed to access agricultural lands. Nonetheless, the difficulty of rural population in accessing farmlands makes controversial authenticity of this land tenure to solve problems of household farmland access. This study aimed at assessing the effects of the current land tenure on augmenting household farmland access in Ethiopia. The study followed a mixed-methods research design to investigate the variables in the study.

Collaborative international research on tenure dates back at least to the early 1960s when the Land Tenure Centre was established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted some studies in collaboration with CGIAR social scientists. CGIAR interest in tenure increased in the early 1990s when natural resource management was strengthened as a component of the CGIAR agenda and the Centers on forests, agroforestry, and water (CIFOR, ICRAF, and IWMI) entered the system.

In many countries around the world, the land administration system deals only with formal land rights, often subject to legislation passed during the colonial period. Formal or statutory tenure is where a landholder’s rights are specified in the law. This enables the owner(s) or rightholder(s) to rely on the law to defend his or her rights. But the poor often hold their land through customary or informal tenure systems which are often not recognized in law or in practice and therefore they lack the tenure security provided by the law.

After the political change in Nepal of 1951, leapfrog land policy improvements have been recorded, however, the land reform initiatives have been short of full success. Despite a land administration system based on cadaster and land registries in place, 25% of the arable land with an estimated 10 million spatial units on the ground are informally occupied and are off-register. Recently, a strong political will has emerged to ensure land rights for all.

Value, and its attribution to unregistered land, is important information for effective land acquisition, taxation and transfer processes and a key component of land administration systems.

Key Messages and Recommendations

• Combating desertification and land degradation while mitigating the effects of drought can secure long-term socio-economic benefits for people living in drylands and reduce their vulnerability to climate change.

• Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is an approach that counterbalances the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas.

• Land tenure insecurity, especially for women, often prevents farmers from adopting sustainable land management practices

Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, (a) with legally
recognized documentation, and (b) who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and type of tenure
 

This one-pager provides details on the LAND-at-scale project in Somalia. This project is implemented by International Organization for Migration (IOM); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); UN-Habitat; Regional Coordination Office Somalia (RCO), and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency. 

Gender and land rights are closely intertwined with each other. Globally, more than 400 million women work in agriculture. Women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, yet they account for less than 20 percent of landholders (FAO 2011). These disparities are even higher in some regions. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, 60 to 70 percent of employed women work in agriculture, with similar rates of land ownership (that is, less than 20 percent).

We begin this text by clarifying what we mean by territory. In our long journey, which began about twenty years ago while working on land and natural resources for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), we understood territories as areas of continuous interaction between humans and nature. We could therefore consider the less anthropized territories (e.g. ecological reserves and pristine areas) as well as areas more affected and managed by humans which have reduced the flow of nature to a minimum (as witnessed in urban areas).

The aim of this paper is to consolidate lessons from existing evidence that demonstrates the role of equitable access and tenure security to land in achieving sustainable food systems transformation, and subsequently, for the overall achievement of the SDGs. It makes the case of the importance of reforming and securing access and tenure rights to land and natural resources.