Redistributive land reform in southern Africa is reviewed against the background of the recent land crisis in the region. The dilemmas created for governments and donors are described, as are attempts to grapple with them. Answers are sought to four questions: What has been the experience with land redistribution in the region over the last decade or so? What has been the impact on people's livelihoods? How are redistribution programmes expected to develop in future?

Results from this study show that the over-used but under-researched association between grazing and land degradation in the Kalahari has been oversimplified. In typical Kalahari conditions, the ecological changes that have been brought about by grazing cannot be linked with more fundamental changes in ecosystem function. Basic soil processes appear relatively unaffected by grazing pressure outside the sacrifice zone, and there is no evidence to suggest that the resilience of the system has been affected through soil degradation.

Why does viewing a household as a single unit have serious downfalls for gender analysis' The unitary view overlooks the crucial fact that gender relations between family members play a large role in intra-household decisions about decision-making, time allocation, and expenditure. A collective model on the other hand allows household analysis to consider gender relations, with attention to women's and men's respective access to, control over, or ownership of resources.

Across Africa, land is integral to identity and existence. Access to, and ownership of land for women is often problematic – particularly when laws and culture collide. Land issues, including family property matters, are often determined within entrenched cultural norms, resulting in the application of a hybrid legal interpretation of both customary and national law that leaves many women at a disadvantage. Under the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015, the Commonwealth Secretariat has spearheaded efforts to secure women’s rights to land in Africa.

In Africa, the pursuit of gender equality in inheritance rights remains one of the most difficult challenges due to its entrenched patriarchal characteristics. This is also the case in the rural communities of South-Eastern Nigeria. This article investigates gender discrimination in the region, among the Igbo ethnic group, with regard to land property rights; and makes policy recommendations to overcome the failures of past intervention efforts, many of which considered this problem as too culturally sensitive.

While the majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly Eastern Africa provide a living for their families on land, they largely do not own it. This comprises one part of a study on women and land in five countries in Eastern Africa - and was commissioned by the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).

Previously in China, all land was controlled by the communes. Over the past twenty years, with the break up of the communes, new land tenure arrangements have given greater control over land to individual households. This essay argues that recent transfers in land tenure between households have caused women to lose rights and decision making power over land, as well as possibilities to benefit from land. Men's migration to cities has caused a 'feminisation' of agriculture which fuels a market for tenure transfer.

The biofuel boom has become a core issue in Zimbabwean land and development debates. Biofuels require large tracts of land for production; and the land acquisition programmes by the various state, non-state actors and individuals have been termed ‘land grabbing’. The increasing global demand for biofuels has different gender specific socio-economic and environmental effects in Zimbabwe. Males and females in the biofuel producing zone may face a differential risk matrix, comprising different issues.

Indigenous land tenure arrangements in South Africa have generally consisted of communal ownership. In this system, who benefited from the land depended on their status as family or clan head. The colonial regime dispossessed Africans of land in favour of European arrivals, or defined family property as ancestral property in which the senior males of the head family were taken as the owners with the rights to inherit. The post-apartheid government conceptualised acess to land for the previously disadvantaged as a human right.

The Women Advancement Trust (WAT) in Tanzania carries out various initiatives related to land rights, affordable housing, and inheritance rights. This report presents lessons learned from a housing and shelter development initiative. The goals of the initiative were to empower low-income communities, particularly women, to participate fully and actively in all aspects of human settlements development, including the improvement of their living and housing conditions.

How can the abstract principles of the human rights-based approach (HRBA) be translated into practical strategies to improve women's ownership and access to land? In Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, despite changes in national law and policy aiming to improve women's land tenure, none of the land reforms meet human rights standards. This is because legal regulation of land blurs with customary laws mostly relating to land transactions and family, marriage or inheritance.

Women's access to land is a fundamental factor in food security. Yet women all over the world suffer under discriminatory property and inheritance laws and customary practices which restrict their rights over the land on which they live and work. Articles 15 and 16 of CEDAW state the rights of women to property and inheritance. This report is a tool to help non-governmental organisations and multilateral agencies in advocacy and policy dialogue using CEDAW and the Optional Protocol (which allows individuals and groups to make complaints directly to the CEDAW committee).