News on Land

Traditionally, women in the DRC gained shares in property through marriage, not inheritance. Today few realize that this custom contradicts the law, which codifies women’s rights to inherit land. In the North Kivu province, one organization is spreading awareness of the law and helping to resolve inheritance disputes.  

RUTSHURU, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — When Salima Salumu’s mother died, she left a large plot of land for her children and ignited a conflict that is not unusual here in the North Kivu province.

21 June 2017: A policy brief by the Global Donor Working Group on Land discusses renewed global commitment to strengthen tracking of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 1.4.2 on land tenure security.

Deadline: 

31/12/2017

Voice is a new innovative grant facility that supports the most marginalised and discriminated people in ten low- and lower-middle income countries in Africa and Asia. It aims to amplify and connect thus far unheard voices in efforts to leave no one behind.

Voice stands out from other grant-making programmes by developing a grant application and reporting process adapted to the five target groups and four grant types and that is accessible, user-friendly and innovative.

Deadline: 

14/07/2017

The Partnership Coordinator ensures the smooth functioning of the Land Matrix partnership, and is responsible for organizing, monitoring and improving project activities, under the direction of the Steering Committee. The position will be based at the University of Pretoria, hosted by the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation. The position will be at project manager level of the University of Pretoria.

Lagos state announced its intention to demolish the homes of around 300,000 people last year and this ruling is a landmark for residents resisting eviction

LONDON, June 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A series of brutal, government-ordered evictions that left more than 30,000 Nigerians homeless were deemed "unconstitutional" in a landmark decision by the Lagos High Court on Wednesday, activists said.

In April, three bus loads of men carrying sticks and machetes arrived in the village with the bulldozer - angry residents fought back

BUGABO, Uganda June 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - "This land is peaceful," said Abdul Seryazi, standing in his family fields in Bugabo, a village in central Uganda.

But a charred bulldozer alongside tells a different story.

In April, three bus loads of men carrying sticks and machetes arrived in the village with the bulldozer.

Tribespeople say individual ownership could lead to fragmentation of land

Edamalakudi’s Oorukkoottam — assembly of people in the tribal hamlet and officials — arrived at an unusual decision last month: no individual household in the panchayat would individually own forestland as guaranteed by the Forest Rights Act.

The event, titled “Honduras: The Fight for Reparations,” is scheduled to last for 12 days.

A delegation of six Garifunas from Belize are scheduled to travel to the Honduran Caribbean coast on Sunday to learn about Garifuna struggles and victories for land repossession, reparations and other ancestral fights.

23 June 2017 – Whether they are single, married, separated or widowed, women must be able to enjoy the inviolable right that they are not dependent on anyone, the United Nations has said, marking International Widow's Day.

The average annual rate of deforestation is nearly 600,000 acres, and deforestation rates in the forested areas re higher than that in non-forested areas, said Tin Tun, director of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, at a workshop on knowledge-sharing among ethnic minority groups in programme to reduce emissions and deforestation in Asia. The workshop was held at the Horizon Lake View Hotel in Nay Pyi Taw yesterday.

Many cash-strapped Maasai have become landless after subdividing and selling swathes of land to the south of Nairobi

NAIROBI, June 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Kenya's opposition leader has raised tensions weeks ahead of elections by criticising the Maasai community's sale of ancestral land to other ethnic groups in an area hit by political violence in the 1990s, land rights experts said.

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Each week, at least four men and women vanish without trace or are found dead, cut down in a hail of gunfire.

In Cambodia, a single mother is separated from her two children, arrested and locked up in prison.

On the dry savannahs of Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul, farmers shoot dead a 26-year-old indigenous man in broad daylight.

In Bangladesh, a university professor receives death threats from an al Qaeda-inspired militant group.