News on Land

Monrovia – The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a local civil society organization that advocates for the participation of local communities in decision-making processes on natural resources, has welcomed the passage into law of the landmark Land Right Bill.

According to Ms. Nora Bowier, SDI Coordinator, the groundbreaking legislation will be a transformative milestone of the post-conflict era in promoting citizens’ participation in the decision-making process.

Human Rights Organizations have requested state officials launch an impartial investigation into the murder.

The memory of Mexican activist Jesus Javier Ramos Arreola will only strengthen the activist’s cause to stall construction of the New Mexican International Airport (NAIM).

The activist was dedicated to the defense of a strip of stony ground called Cerro del Tenayo, the location destined for the new international airport. Residents say the hill was home to several archaeological remains as well as diminishing species of flora and fauna.

"In many communities, customary law is used as a tool to deny women their rights to housing, property, land, and inheritance."

BANGKOK - An indigenous woman in northern India is taking her fight for inheritance rights to the country's top court, leading others who are pushing back against sexist laws and customs.

Ratan Manjari, who heads the women's rights group Mahila Kalyan Parishad in Himachal Pradesh state, received land she had inherited from her parents - a rare occurrence where she lives.

Twenty-eight years after independence, wealth in Namibia is still skewed along racial lines laid down in the colonial period. The level of inequality is one of the highest in the world, according to the World Bank.

This is the first article in a four-part series on the potential to apply the Community Land Trust (CLT) model under existing Brazilian laws to secure land rights in Brazil’s favelas.

Global land rights group releases roadmap for agri-business investments 

New digital platform provides step-by-step instructions for implementing international standards that recognize and protect land rights.

NAIROBI ( Landscape News) – Degradation of natural resources reduces employment opportunities for at least 11 million young Africans entering the job market every year, and soil and nutrient depletion on croplands cost the continent 3 percent of its gross domestic product. Climate change magnifies the challenge.

MWINGITSA, Malawi (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Life was never easy for Salome Nkalawire but when her husband died the mother of four faced her toughest challenge yet.

She lost the small plot of land the couple had bought together and farmed in Mwingitsa village in the south of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world.

When her husband passed away, Nkalawire’s relatives would not allow her to keep the plot because cultural norms dictate that widowed or abandoned women cannot own land, even if they have a legal claim to it.

Two events held on Tuesday, September 18 demonstrated an enormous divide between groups working on issues related to favelas and favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Both events had more than one hundred people present and each featured an influential global thinker to help foster debate.

The battle to stop the spread of extractive industries pits indigenous and peasant communities against powerful business interests, backed up by politicians who encourage the foreign investments that convert millennial ways of life into cash—for them

Pastoralists manage land in way that keeps carbon in soil instead of releasing climate-changing emissions, experts say

TURIN, Italy - Nomadic herders across Africa can work in tandem with farmers and produce sustainable food without damaging the land or harming the planet, experts and pastoralists said on Saturday.

JAKARTA — Indigenous rights activists in Indonesia have expressed concern that the government is stalling the passage of a long-awaited bill on indigenous rights by tangling the legislative process in red tape.

The government said in July that it had agreed with members of the House of Representatives to stat discussions on the bill on Aug. 16. But the legislative docket seen by Mongabay shows the start of those discussions has been pushed back to Sept. 27.