News on Land

Global Forest Watch (GFW) is thrilled to announce the 2017 call for proposals for our Small Grants Fund. Now in its fourth year, the Small Grants Fund supports non-governmental organizations by providing financial and technical support to optimize their use of GFW tools and data for better forest monitoring and management.

Community groups in South Sumatra are protesting against Asia Pulp & Paper's planned choice of timber supplier for its massive new pulp and tissue mill, which they say used the army and police to intimidate them during a public consultation over land use.

Community groups have launched a protest against one of the suppliers to Asia Pulp and Paper’s (APP) new mill in South Sumatra, Indonesia, accusing the company of using intimidation tactics during a public consultation over land rights. 

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The search for Momentum for Change’s 2017 Lighthouse Activities is on! Applications are being accepted from 30 January to 9 April. Spearheaded by the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, Momentum for Change shines a light on the most innovative, scalable and replicable examples of what people around the world are doing to tackle climate change.

If you’re leading a results-driven project that is successfully addressing climate change, we want to hear from you!

The issue of women’s land rights is one of the human rights issues that is not given enough attention; however, about 50% to 60% of rural women in Ghana constitutes the labour force within the agricultural sector, yet only 10% earn income and only 8% own land.

The limited land ownership and rights has led to limited access to productive resources.

As the world marks International Women's Day on Wednesday, six women from different countries in Southeast Asia received recognition from advocacy group Amnesty International for their "heroism" in standing up for human rights despite the criminalization and violence they have faced.

The group recognizes the six women, who have long fought against injustice in each respective country, as figures that "inspire many in the region and whose contributions to society should be commended; not condemned".

Chengetai Zonke lost much of her maize crop to drought last year. When it came to planting again, she decided to reduce her stake in what has become a recurrent climate change gamble.

At her homestead in Chiware, in Zimbabwe’s northeastern Manicaland Province, the 52-year-old farmer explained why. “I’ve abandoned tilling the bigger fields to avoid the risk of putting more land under crops that may fail due to lack of rain or too much rain,” she told IRIN. “Replanting costs money, which is scarce.”

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Mokoro is pleased to share news of the successful completion of fieldwork in the fourth of six phases of our WOLTS pilot study in both Mongolia and Tanzania. WOLTS is a major multi-country strategic action-oriented research project in support of the land rights of women and vulnerable groups. The WOLTS team is well underway with preparing two major reports of our country research findings, to be launched, respectively, in May and June this year.

A facet of this problem arises from the nature of the land tenure system in the country over the decades.

As we celebrate the International Women’s day today, emphasis should be put to the extent to which some of the obligations have been achieved with regard to women’s basic needs including shelter, access to land and land security etc. The state of shelter development in Uganda shows that, with the bulk of its urban population in informal settlements, there is lack of security of tenure.

Empowerment of rural women is fundamental for achieving 2030 Agenda

FAO/IFAD/WFP Joint News Release

8 March 2017, Rome - Leaders from the three UN Rome-based agencies today marked International Women's Day  by reinforcing their commitments to step up efforts to invest in the capacities of rural women as key agents of change in building a world without hunger.