On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and on the farm.
In a workshop with a group of agronomists who work in agriculture extension in India, I ask the participants to draw the picture of a farmer with whom they work. All but one of them draw male figures.
Our sugar is made from sugarcane. And sugarcane is not planted in trees or in the air, it’s planted in the ground, in the soil, on land. It’s the bedrock of our investment.
—Illovo Land Champion
By Chris Hufstader
After an audacious land grab by a foreign company, indigenous women in a remote Cambodian village struggle to regain their farms and sacred sites.
Sol Preng remembers vividly the day in 2012 when bulldozers unexpectedly arrived on her family farm.
“The company came and cleared away our cashew trees right before the harvest,” she says. “I lost four hectares of land and all my cashew trees.”
As a human rights organisation, gender justice is a fundamental principle of our work, and we have long been conscious of, and sought to address, the barriers to effective participation in decision-making by women, as well as the other human rights violations they may face on account of their gender.
This July is the first time the United Nations will review the progress made towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15, which is about Life on Land. Each goal will be reviewed about every 4 years until 2030.
The reviews will be based on the 10 indicators countries agreed on, that assess change in each country over time. Two important developments relating to the indicator on land degradation neutrality (15.3.1) have occurred, since its adoption in 2015.
Uma entrevista com Patrícia Chaves, da organização brasileira Espaço Feminista, explica as discrepâncias no acesso à propriedade e aos direitos de herança por mulheres no Brasil, bem como a dados que informem as mulheres nas comunidades sobre seus direitos. O texto traz também relatos poderosos de experiências pessoais das mulheres.
By Tim Hanstad, Co-Founder & Senior Advisor, Landesa
This is the second blog in a series of two that are based on a keynote address made at the 2018 India Land Development Conference.
As members of the land community, we know that access to a stable and flourishing piece of land, even the smallest plot or parcel, has the potential to be ground-breaking and life-changing. It means the difference between health and illness, between being read and illiterate, and in the most extreme cases, the difference between being fed and hungry. In essence, it determines one’s life path, the key factor between qualifying for essential government services and living at the peripheries and margins of society.
