Desde una comunidad en el corazón de la crisis climática, la lideresa guaraní Mariela Melgar Ibáñez cree que las mujeres indígenas tienen la clave para resolver la crisis climática. “El mundo debe conocer nuestras formas de vida y el rol que tenemos dentro de el cuidado del medio ambiente; Las mujeres somos fundamentales, luchamos por el territorio.”
By Peter Sangeyon, Gender and Land Champion, WOLTS Project Tanzania
From 1995 to 2005 I was the village chairman, and I was a ward councillor for ten years after that. I was very pleased when the community selected me to be a WOLTS gender and land champion.
Chad is at the verge of an emerging land tenure crisis. As observed in many countries in Africa, formal and customary tenure systems overlap. Customary tenure systems, that generally prevail in rural areas, differ from region to region, with each its own needs and practices. Land conflicts are abundant, caused by degradation and transformation of land surfaces caused by climate change, as well as land investments by domestic investors with disputed legitimacy.
On 27-28 June 2022, RVO organized the first annual LAND-at-scale exchange, bringing together over fifty LAND-at-scale project partners, knowledge management partners, Committee members as well as representatives from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an in-depth introduction of all LAND-at-scale stakeholders and facilitate a learning exchange.
Just like many African countries, a majority of Zambian tribes follow a matrilineal system, that is, an affinity system in which descent is derived through maternal instead of paternal lines which essentially means children are recognised by the names or family of their mothers. This does not only affect decent but also involves the inheritance of titles and property including land through the female line. One might ask why women have less access and control of land in Zambia when land and property is inherited through maternal lines.
By Allan Cain, Development Workshop Angola
* This article was originally published as part of the online discussion on customary law in Southern Africa
Our food systems are in urgent need of transformation, as humanity faces one of our biggest challenges yet; feeding a future population of 10 billion people with safe and nutritious food while keeping a healthy planet. Our food system has the power to tip the scales and transform the future of our planet and humankind.
This session zoomed in on the local situation and challenges faced by grassroots communities and women in some low-Income countries. It provided an overview of support provided by Civil Society organizations (and governments) facilitating communities, women in particular, to step up the efforts to strengthen their land rights and to generate resilience in face of the climate and COVID-19 challenges they are facing.
More secure land tenure provides much better opportunities to face climate and COVID-19 challenges by investing in high biodiversity local food & income systems.
By: Thais Bessa, gender advisor at Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG).
Purnima Kora is an ambitious farmer. She owns two small parcels of land that she purchased with her husband’s support and years of savings she earned from farming PepsiCo potatoes and rice, as well as by leveraging micro loans through a women’s self-help group. She also leases another half-acre plot to farm potatoes.
Advancing women’s land rights is a priority for the international development agenda. Yet, there is no consensus on which rights should be monitored and reported. Three indicators of women’s property rights are widely used in the literature. Each captures a different aspect of women’s land rights, but a recent paper explores the extent to which these different rights are held by the same person, using data from six African countries.
What are the state-of-the-art and new approaches to land consolidation as part of integrated rural development strategies in North Africa and Near East? That was the main question around which several experts from Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Turkey joined the FAO/ RVO roundtable discussion on land consolidation during the Second Arab Land Conference last February; a session which 110 participants attended – both in person and online.
When Talabitti’s husband died in 2016, her claim to the family land seemed to die with him. Though her husband had worked the family land by himself, upon his death his male cousins laid their claim. If Talabitti attempted to make a competing claim, they threatened to drive her away – with violence, if necessary. Sadly, this threat materialized.