The Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa (NELGA) is a partnership of leading African universities and research institutions with proven leadership in education, training and research on land governance. Currently NELGA has more than 70 partner institutions in over 40 countries and is organized in 6 regional and  1 technical node supported by a Secretariat.

This practitioner’s guide explains how to promote gender-responsive forest tenure reform in community-based forest regimes. It is aimed at those taking up this challenge in developing countries. There is no one single approach to reforming forest tenure practices for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. Rather, it involves taking advantage of opportunities that emerge in various institutional arenas such as policy and law-making and implementation, government administration, customary or community-based tenure governance, or forest restoration at the landscape scale.

Afghanistan continues to struggle to overcome decades of war and civil strife. Its political context remains complex and dominated by the Taliban insurgency, narcotics production, weak governance and incomplete rule of law. After more than fifteen years of state building Afghanistan remains a fragile state.

This paper reviews the formal treatment of land rights in Afghanistan over the post-Bonn decade (2002 - 2012). The objective is to document the developments in the recent past to better understand present and possible future trends.

According to land reform experts, in Afghanistan, as in other developing countries, land administration is critical to economic growth and security. Since 2004, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported efforts to address land reform and land tenure in Afghanistan because of their effects on the economy and the lives of the Afghan people. According to a U.S. Institute of Peace land expert, the majority of Afghans do not have proper legal documentation for their land ownership, due in part to poor paper records and land titles.

The longest-running barometer of Afghan opinion, the Survey of the Afghan People is a map of social change over time, presenting a clear picture of the gains and gaps that Afghans perceive in a rapidly transforming nation.

The Afghanistan land sector is plagued by a multitude of problems linked to weak governance, corruption and lack of capacity. There are competing claims to land, widespread conflicts, resultant landlessness and poverty. Other issues are limited availability of undisputed farmland, difficulties in accessing grazing lands and many disputes over pasture lands. These issues are exacerbated by conflicting land ownership systems, insecure land tenure and registration, weak land governance environment and uncertain and incomplete legal frameworks.

This article presents a comparison for the impact from lack of land governance in Brazil between livestock and agricultural production. It begins with a brief description of the land regulatory system and its development in Mato Grosso do Sul State and Brazil. The methodology was based on focus groups research, conducted by CEPEA/USP (Center for advanced Studies on Applied Economics/University of São Paulo) on local production sites in Mato Grosso do Sul state, where a regional modal farm was established.

Brazil has the fifth-largest national land area in the world and this land resource represents a critical asset for the country’s urban, agricultural, and economic development, also providing essential environmental services. Nevertheless, it has a historical lack of governance over its lands, failing to provide secure land rights and to control the extensive frauds resulting in public and private land grabs. The objective of this study is to depict evidence of these land grabs and propose a typology for analyzing them.

Internationally there are an alarming number of violations of indigenous peoples’ land and human rights. Brazil is currently under the spotlight as the heightening of the political crisis that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff brings national and international concerns over the uncertainty related to changes in policy that may be adopted by the interim Government in relation to indigenous peoples land rights.