In sub-Saharan Africa, less than 13 percent of women aged 20-49 have rights to land, according to research by the World Bank. Therefore, securing their land rights remains a very crucial matter to boost their socio-economic empowerment. 

The effectiveness of sustainable land use governance can be undermined if local affected people perceive land-use policies as not reflecting social objectives, or as ‘unjust.’ To transform externally-conceived sustainability principles from the international level into on-the-ground practice, involves the interplay of various organizations and peoples from the government, civil society, and the private sector.

There is an underlying tension in the land rights movement that is rarely addressed head on, which is the perception that securing women’s land rights threatens community land rights. Community land rights are typically held by indigenous people, small-scale and subsistence farmers, pastoralists, herders and many other groups who are directly dependent on land for their livelihoods but whose land tenure is often the most precarious.

The main objective of the LAND-at-scale program is to directly strengthen essential land governance components for men, women and youth that have the potential to contribute to structural, just, sustainable and inclusive change at scale. An ambitious objective, that cannot be achieved in isolation. Alignment is, therefore, a key factor in all LAND-at-scale activities - be it at project level for our country interventions or through our collaborative approach to knowledge management.

Land. It is a commodity like no other. We live on it. We grow from it. We drink from it and build our futures upon it. But — increasingly and frighteningly so — we don’t share it equally.

The distribution of land has long defined the gap between rich and poor. Now new data shows clearer than ever how the way in which land is being shared and managed profoundly impacts extreme and rising inequality, and the achievement of women’s and girl’s rights.

Across much of Africa, land is not allocated and inherited under statutory law but through customary practices rooted in kinship. In patrilineal systems, land belongs to men’s families and is inherited through the paternal line.

In Zambia, many ethnic groups follow a matrilineal system, where women own land and pass it down the maternal line.

Securing women’s land rights remains high in the news and in the development agenda in recent months. A quick search on Land Portal shows since March this year more than 250 resources related to land & gender, including news articles, blogs and publications.

By: Thais Bessa, gender advisor at Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG). 

Purnima Kora is an ambitious farmer. She owns two small parcels of land that she purchased with her husband’s support and years of savings she earned from farming PepsiCo potatoes and rice, as well as by leveraging micro loans through a women’s self-help group. She also leases another half-acre plot to farm potatoes.  

The task of opening a large event is never easy. Within a short space of time, you need to set out a clear agenda, freshening the perspective of the viewer, and then clear the decks for discussion to move forwards rather than retread old ground. Following some introductory greetings from Jean-François Cuénod of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Micah Ingalls (Team Leader MRLG) took up the challenge.

This blog was written by Barbara Fraser and published by EarthBeat at: https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/politics/indigenous-peoples-lives-depend-their-lands-threats-are-growing-worldwide

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Advancing women’s land rights is a priority for the international development agenda. Yet, there is no consensus on which rights should be monitored and reported. Three indicators of women’s property rights are widely used in the literature. Each captures a different aspect of women’s land rights, but a recent paper explores the extent to which these different rights are held by the same person, using data from six African countries.

Pilot study supports national roll-out of participatory land use planning

Sound, sustainable land management is critical to the long-term viability of Mongolia’s traditional herding way of life. And careful planning at local level, in a participatory and gender-inclusive way, is needed to underpin that.