In many parts of Africa, legal services organisations have developed innovative ways for using legal processes to help disadvantaged groups have more secure land rights. Their approaches, tools and methods vary widely – from legal literacy training to paralegals programmes, from participatory methodologies to help local groups register their lands or negotiate with government or the private sector through to legal representation and strategic use of public interest litigation.

Examines the current wave of land tenure reform in Eastern and Southern Africa. Discusses how far tenure reform reflects a shift in powers over property from centre to periphery. A central question is whether tenure reform is designed to deliver to rural smallholders greater security of tenure and greater control over the regulation and transfer of these rights.

Subtitled ‘an analysis of the tenure context and a problem statement for Leap.’ Comprises (i) context – current analyses of tenure, the South African context, tenure security and vulnerability; (ii) multiple tenure arrangements in South Africa – customary tenure arrangements, Registration of Deeds system, local and off register tenure arrangements in rural and urban areas, transitional tenure arrangements; (iii) problem statements – multiple tenure arrangements, vulnerability and tenure; (iv) points of departure for phase 4 – understanding, recognition and integration, vulnerability.

Celebrates the launching of OpenLandContracts, an international repository of land deals created in response to the general lack of transparency surrounding such deals. The contracts are annotated to help users navigate them.

Focuses on tackling land issues in post-conflict states. Root of problem is that most rural populations are little better than squatters on their own land in the eyes of the law. Remedy is to acknowledge customary land rights as equivalent to private property rights.

Revisits Zimbabwe’s land question 5 years after the launching of the ‘fast-track’ land redistribution programme which has created a new paradigm, the consequences of which will take many years to work through the country’s political, economic, and social fabric. Briefly defines old and new versions of Zimbabwe’s land question before outlining salient aspects of the reform process. Assesses the outcomes of the redistribution, the apparent lacuna between land and agrarian reform, and the debate the reform process has kindled.

Examines the policies and practices on land of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). While DFID’s approach to land reform in the 1980s reflected the dictates of modernisation, formal registration and market-led distribution of land of the IFIs, this was followed 1997-2002 by a period where changes were made to move in the direction of a rights-based approach.

For many millions in the developing world, land is central to livelihoods, food security, even identity – the result of a direct dependence on agriculture and natural resources. It is not surprising that a recent wave of large-scale land acquisitions in Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America has sparked a major debate. The briefing provides an analysis of this complex and shifting situation, focusing on Africa.

Addresses the tenure fate of three commons: the 30 million hectares of pasture lands of Afghanistan which represent 45 percent of the total land area and are key to livelihood and water catchment in that exceedingly dry country; the 5.7 million hectares of timber-rich tropical forests in Liberia, 59 percent of the total land area; and the 125 million hectares of savannah in Sudan, half the area of that largest state of Africa. All three resources have a long history as customary properties of local communities and also share a 20th century history as the property of the state.

Includes gender equality – a liberation struggle or a colonial imposition?; gender equality vs. traditional culture; women’s land rights in traditional culture; what are the practical solutions?; can the paradigm help improve women’s land rights?

The spread and deepening of economic globalisation has highlighted the ever closer connections between the international legal arrangements for the governance of the global economy on the one hand, and claims to land and natural resources on the other. In a globalised world, land governance is shaped by international as well as national regulation. As pressures on valuable lands intensify and land relations become more trans-national, increasing recourse to international investment treaties is redesigning spaces for land claims at local and national levels.

A contribution to the current vibrant debate on land in Kenya following recent upheavals. Argues the need for a radical restructure of the way property relations are governed because what is being contested today is not just property but power over property. Makes practical suggestions for genuinely local democratisation of land governance. Need to act on identified illegal allocation of public land; devolve, not de-concentrate, land administration and to the most local level possible; and vest radical title in real communities, not district/tribal territorial domains.