Land & Gender

In the name of development, governments in southern Africa are reformulating land policies to facilitate privatisation of customary land rights.

The complex relationship between law, land rights and customary practices is increasingly recognized as foundational to formulating successful development policies.

Includes background to women’s land rights in Zambia; policy and legal reforms of the1990s; key findings – gender insensitivity on land laws and policies, the high cost of legal fees to handle land disputes, the limited benefits of title deeds for women, lack of awareness on land policy process, land grabbing and disinheritance, lack of security of tenure, lack of access to justice; conclusions

Contains relationship between land rights, poverty and food security; political support for women’s land rights?; change through education and empowerment; in whose interest?; law and enforcement; part of wider changes.

Globalisation impacts on local land markets and land-use, land transaction costs affect food prices, and the combined effect is particularly damaging to women who produce food and put food on the table for their families.

Argues that decentralisation holds much potential for lively, participatory democratic lawmaking and enforcement through which rural women can gain greater power and secure more rights. Essential that all decentralisation policy be guided by constitutional principles. Explores the guiding principles necessary to safeguard democratic decentralisation.

Includes background to women’s land rights in Uganda; lack of information; prevailing cultural attitudes that discriminate against women; lack of formal land ownership by women; lack of participation of women in land policy formulation; exclusion of women in matters of land inheritance; lack of access to justice; gaps in the ongoing land reform process; conclusions and recommendations.

Includes the rise of land deals in sub-Saharan Africa; land grabbing and risks for small scale farmers; land grabs: another yoke over women’s land rights?; is land grabbing threatening pastoralism?; opportunity for groups at risk: the African Union’s continental standards on the land question.

Last 25-26 October 2010, the Association for Land Reform and Rural Development (ALRD), the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC) and the International Land Coalition (ILC) jointly organised this Regional Workshop on Women and Land Rights, as a response to the urgent need to cast the spotlight on women and their access to and ownership of land.

This document contains the Policy Framework for Pastoralism in Africa, which was drafted by the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union Commission.

The Medium Term Development Plan 2011-2015 (MTDP) is a 5-year rolling development plan that sets the sector strategies, targets, deliverables and their projected estimated cost of implementation. The MTDP is aimed at translating the Papua New Guinea Development Strategic Plan 2010-2030 (PNGDSP) into tangible results.

Includes gender in the existing literature, entrenched gender discrimination, case studies from Ethiopia, Zambia and Rwanda, ways forward, conclusion. Based on a larger study for the International Land Coalition.