By Federica Gabellini, Communication Specialist - Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Land Tenure, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
This blog was produced for the LEGEND Land Policy Bulletin. Land: Enhancing Governance for Economic Development (LEGEND) is a DFID programme that aims to improve land rights protection, knowledge and information, and the quality of private sector investment in DFID priority countries.
Even when legal frameworks promoting gender equality are in place, local customs and traditions can exert subtle pressure that favours male ownership in land purchases and inheritance.
In the Western Balkans, an FAO-World Bank joint initiative was launched in 2013 to tackle this issue.
The regional initiative, which aims to build capacity to generate gender-disaggregated reports and use them for policy making, has been embraced by six countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo,[1] Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYR Macedonia), and Serbia.
The countries established gender teams consisting of land administration specialists, notaries, government policy makers, gender officers, local NGO staff and private sector representatives. Each team implemented a pilot gender equality project to increase awareness of the beneficiaries, with the aim of having both women and men register their property.
The teams were trained on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure[2] and the technical guide on ’Governing Land for Women and Men’. Both documents have been translated into Albanian and are now available in digital format and hard copy. All the publications and e-learning courses are also currently being translated into Arabic, in order to further disseminate the Voluntary Guidelines implementation tools.
A lot has been done but efforts must not stop there
The enthusiastic exchange of ideas and experiences across country teams shows that change is possible, despite deeply held customs and traditions. With promising legal frameworks in place, the gender teams can continue their work in the Western Balkans.
Country teams have set out a plan that includes: helping notaries to collect data and contribute to the preparation of a gender guide for their daily work; developing regional platforms for gender-disaggregated data from the participating countries in a standardised format, compatible with global requirements and with special focus on agricultural land; developing flexible reporting tools for gender-disaggregated data from censuses, surveys and administrative systems; providing support to prepare data for monitoring the new Sustainable Development Goals’ land-related targets, as well as methodology and pilot testing in smaller areas; and assessments of the legal framework for gender-equitable land tenure. Regional exchanges will help country teams learn from their experiences and make use of best practices.
Useful links:
Access the e-learning course on Governing Land for Women and Men
Watch the video on Gender and Land in the Western Balkans
Legislation Assessment Tool & Global Gender and Land Statistics: The Gender and Land Rights Database
For more information contact Federica Gabellini at Federica.Gabellini@fao.org
Stories from the field
Albania
In Albania, an awareness campaign about women’s and girls’ property rights has targeted communities in eight municipalities: Vlorë, Fier, Shkodër, Malësi e Madhe, Durrës, Shijak, Tiranë and Lezhë. Legal support was provided to 44 women during 2014 through a partnership with the Centre for Legal and Civic Initiatives. About 167 lawyers, property registration specialists and notaries were trained on filling the gender gap in the implementation of property related legislation.
’Women and property rights’, a brochure prepared by the Centre for Legal Civic Initiatives and UN Women, features best and worst practices to inform all citizens of their property and economic rights. This brochure also targets legal professionals – judges, notaries, property registration specialists and lawyers – to ensure women and girls have better access to property rights and entitlements. A list of eight proposals, including four law amendments and four administrative acts and regulations, has been submitted to the Ministry of Justice and other relevant institutions.
Kosovo
In Kosovo, 15 per cent of properties are owned or co-owned by women. A pilot campaign to waive the property registration service charge for couples who jointly register their property was implemented last year with positive results — during the first two months of the project, more than 20 per cent of newly registered properties had women as owners or co-owners in the municipality of Shtime.
Building on this initiative, legal aid services have been provided to women in rural areas including war widows, elderly women, and women from Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian minorities. The services are aligned with the ongoing systematic registration, which takes place in 50 new cadastre zones, and promotes public participation in that registration. The effectiveness of this legal support has been tested by a randomised controlled trial in eight of the 50 zones.
Serbia
In Serbia, where there are significant differences in women’s land ownership between regions (rates range from 13–51 per cent), the country team has participated in designing a World Bank-financed real estate management project to help vulnerable groups and promote equitable access to property rights. The project, which runs from 2015 to 2020, contains specific mechanisms to address vulnerabilities. These include: mobile registration services; renovation of selected local registration offices to ensure disabled access; capacity building for local registration staff; enhanced communication strategies; and generation and use of gender-disaggregated data.
FYR Macedonia
In FYR Macedonia, the country team focused on building institutional capacity to promote policy dialogue and to make gender equality a mainstream issue at the local level. Household surveys have been completed in three pilot municipalities, revealing a significant gap between both women’s and men’s perception of tenure security and the factual administrative data on property registration.
A household survey shows that 95 per cent of respondents believe their tenure rights are secure and that girls and boys have equal rights to inherit their parents’ property, but disaggregated data show that only 16 per cent of properties have women registered as owners or co-owners. One pilot municipality, Aerodrom, has committed to making women’s property rights one of the top priorities in its next integrated strategy for development.
[1] This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.
[2] The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests as a means of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and enhancing the environment. They were officially endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. Read more: https://www.fao.org/nr/tenure/voluntary-guidelines/en/