The Sri Lankan army and forestry department has continued its ban on Tamil villagers of North Nedungeeni Vedivaithakal in Vavuniya from entering the village. 

Although residents in the area have proof of their lands, the army has set up camp in the village and continues to prevent people from entering the area. Some 15 families who attempted to clear their own land to relocate there using a permit from the Divisional Secretary, were denied entry by the army and the forestry department. 

The Balochistan High Court (BHC), in a landmark judgment, has declared that the ‘unsettled land’ of Pakistan’s largest province belongs to the indigenous tribes and not the provincial government.

Despite its low population, the Balochistan province is the biggest federating unit of Pakistan in terms of its size, making up for 43 percent of the country’s total area. 90 percent of the total area of Balochistan is unsettled and undocumented land, according to The Express Tribune.

Since the 1980s, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) manages and publishes the AGROVOC Multilingual Thesaurus, which thematically covers FAO’s areas of interest with more than 39 000 concepts and 800 000 terms organized hierarchically. When launched, AGROVOC was made available in three languages – English, Spanish and French – and its purpose was to serve as a terminology for the indexing of publications in agricultural science and technology.

Improving tenure of forests by Indigenous and Tribal Peoples can lower deforestation rates and biodiversity loss, avoiding C02 emissions, but more investment is urgently needed to address rising threats.