The global thirst for palm oil has never been more ravenous. Caught between it and a multigenerational war on Thailand’s poor are the farmers of the Southern Peasants’ Federation, who simply want a piece of land to call their own.

Main photo: Palm tree jungles and the mountains of Surat Thani Province in southern Thailand.

The Cambodian government is embarking on a number of ambitious development projects, which critics say come at the expense of the environment and people’s livelihoods

Main photo: Sophea Soung has been cultivating vegetables – such as this water mimosa – in Phnom Penh’s Tompoun Lake for over a decade, but her livelihood is now under threat (Image © Thomas Cristofoletti / Ruom)

Nepal’s Indigenous peoples have suffered a litany of human rights violations over the past five decades as a result of abusive conservation policies, said Amnesty International and the Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC), in a new report published today.

In August 2021, a newsletter covering various land governance programmes of GIZ was launched. This newsletter is available for everybody who is interested and informs about current development within GIZ land governance and beyond. The three main programmes responsible for the newsletter are: 

The Global Programme Responsible Land Policy,

The government today dissolved the Land Related Problem-Solving Commission that was formed by the KP Sharma Oli government on 22 March 2020.

The commission was formed to provide land to landless people across the country and to manage informal settlers. It had a tenure of three years.

The commission was headed by Devi Prasad Gyawali, who had lost Bharatpur Metropolitan City's mayoral race to CPN-Maoist Centre candidate and CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal's daughter Renu Dahal.

Collaborative social work is preparing communities for the historic task of untangling land ownership in a municipality plagued with conflict and displacement.

Land ownership in Tumaco, Colombia, is like an onion. When a layer of history is peeled back, another layer lies beneath it. Over time, these onions—these parcels that once belonged to agro-industrial farms, latifundista families, and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities—have been abandoned and reclaimed, again and again.

According to human rights activists, an alleged crackdown is happening against those who are vocal against Bahria Town Karachi and the forced acquisition of lands and evictions.

Last month, while Murad Gabol’s two children were sleeping, police raided his house. “We showed them the papers of our home, but they beat us and locked me up in jail,” Gabol said.

When a small group of armed insurgents in cars arrived in a village in the Wakhan Corridor, it put a sharp focus on Beijing’s role in this nation shattered by more than four decades of war.

Main photo: A Kyrgyz family in the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land that connects Afghanistan to China. CREDIT: MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA

…………………

The Land Portal Foundation and Open Data Charter intend to implement the Open Up Guide for Land Governance in the period 2021 - 2024. As part of this project, we seek to develop State of Land Information (SOLI) reports for 10-12 countries in Africa and Latin America. The SOLI reports will provide an overview of publicly available data and information on key land issues from government and other stakeholders in targeted countries.