Paper prepared for the FAO’s Southern and Eastern Africa Office. Covers the impact of HIV/AIDS on sub-Saharan Africa; the underlying causes of HIV/AIDS; its economic impact; its impact on the household livelihood strategies; and a conceptual framework. Looks at HIV/AIDS and poverty, regional migration, poverty-driven commercial sex work; the impact on the macro economy and the rural economy, on agricultural production and coping strategies, and women, children and the elderly and HIV/AIDS.

This shadow report, led by The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights -Peru (CLADEM-Peru), contributes to the United Nations Committee that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is an opportunity for women's groups to monitor their government and to raise concerns about the official submission of the government to the CEDAW committee.

Este artigo junta-se aos esforços de muitos outros africanos, entendendo-se por pobreza não só os níveis de rendimento por dia por pessoa, mas também a pobreza como ausência de poder nas relações intra-familiares, entre estas e os demais actores e entre a sociedade no seu todo e os recursos naturais de que se dispõe no Continente Africano.

Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc.

Este artigo junta-se aos esforços de muitos outros africanos, entendendo-se por pobreza não só os níveis de rendimento por dia por pessoa, mas também a pobreza como ausência de poder nas relações intra-familiares, entre estas e os demais actores e entre a sociedade no seu todo e os recursos naturais de que se dispõe no Continente Africano.

Examines policy and legal reforms in the 1990s; strengths of the 1995 Lands Act and civil society concerns about it; policy framework; Lands Tribunal; women’s constraints in customary land, alienation of land, inheritance and accessing urban land, government attempts to promote women’s access and control over land; conclusions and future challenges.

Includes the issue of gender in access to land, a major source of inequality; FIG declarations and guidelines are gender sensitive; why mainstreaming and what is it about?; ideas for an action plan including – gender disaggregated land data and gender sensitive indicators; understanding and working with gender roles under plural legal regimes; making socio-economic studies a part of planning land reforms and cadastral systems; developing simple, local methods of land administration; improving the gender balance at all levels in land administration; ensuring participation of women in impleme

Report on a desktop study commissioned by FAO. Contains introduction; the context for land reform (the legacy of colonialism, women’s access, women in agriculture, HIV/AIDS and land reform); an overview of land reform issues and debates (policy issues, gender equity as a policy goal); land reform and women (case studies from Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe); conclusion (key findings and recommendations); synopsis of land policies by country.

Argues that the debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed that landholding systems are evolving into individualised systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealised ’households’.

This paper does not presume to offer definitive answers to complex questions raised around the new emphasis on “local communities” in Mozambique. Such answers vary and depend upon the socio political histories of each community. Instead, the paper briefly explores the concept of local community in the lexicon of Mozambican law as well as NGO and donor discourse.

The goal of the National Land Policy in Malawi is to ensure tenure security and equitable access to land, to facilitate the attainment of social harmony and broad based social and economic development through optimum and ecologically balanced use of land and land based resources.A number of specific land policy objectives have to be satisfied in order to achieve the overall goal, particularly: a) Promote tenure reforms that guarantee security and instill confidence and fairness in all land transactions: Guarantee secure tenure and equitable access to land without any gender bias and/or disc

The paper shows that most women in Zambia and especially in the study area suffer from insecurity in land since they do not have secure title to land under customary tenure. The results from the research which was carried out using semi structured interviews with 34 female farmers show that the majority of women farmers (62%) were not allocated land directly by headmen but got land through a male contact.