[adapted from GTZ] 1999- More than one hundred technical co-operation projects on three continents supported by the various technical departments of GTZ were involved in this discussion on Land Use Planning, paying specific attention to gender and women’s promotion through its pilot program “Gender and Women’s Promotion”.

[adapted from ActionAid] October, 2012- The report states that the importance of land to rural women goes beyond growing food. Having secure access to, and independent control over, land can mean the difference between, on the one hand, enjoying rights such as education and freedom from violence or, on the other, continual subjugation in society. ActionAid view security of land tenure for impoverished rural communities as a fundamental component of dignified, sustainable development and a crucial step towards reducing poverty and reducing inequality.

Through case studies from Asia, Africa, eastern Europe and Latin America, this book by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Susie Jacobs presents an overview of global gender and agrarian reform experiences.  Recognising the widespread marginalisation of gender issues from policy and theoretical discussions of agrarian reform,  Jacobs attempts to highlight the profound implications that redistribution of land has for women and for gender relations.  The book compares land and agrarian reforms in which land has been redistributed collectively and to individual households.

[September 2008]

Within this report, the FAO outlines its efforts to reinforce local institutions and promote policies and legislation that aim for fairer access for both women and men to natural resources (particularly land, water, fishing and forestry) and to the relevant economic and social resources.

It goes on to approach the reasons why land tenure should be taken into account in project design, highlighting ecological issues, questions of gender, conflict and migrations, and the relationships between them.

[via UN-HABITAT] How can we judge if a land tool is responsive to both women and men’s needs?

Despite progress on women’s rights, rights to land and security of tenure are not enjoyed equally by women and men in many parts of the world. This goes against international human rights, and also impacts negatively on households and the economy.

[via UN-HABITAT] GLTN considers gender as a critical cross-cutting theme in the work on promoting pro-poor, large-scale land tools (for more information on GLTN see www.gltn.net). This short report summarises an analysis undertaken by the GLTN Secretariat to assess how women’s rights, and specific needs, are being addressed by selected projects in the GLTN land tool inventory—a database consisting of numerous international development projects in the land sector is available on the website.

[via UNDP, 2008] These 4 Policy Briefs from UNDP show how increasing knowledge about gender relations and empowerment has highlighted the importance of access to and control over land within intra-household gender relations, and what this implies for broader concerns about empowerment of the poor.  Moreover, significant knowledge gaps are also found in discussions on the link between land policies and cultural, territorial and gender empowerment issues.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

[via FAO] This report is based on the proceedings of the Technical Consultation on Gender, Property Rights and Livelihoods in the Era of AIDS, organized by FAO in November 2008. It takes stock of where FAO and its partners are in terms of addressing property rights insecurity and provides a proposed framework through which future action can take place.

This background briefing reports on a study of land access for returnees in Rwanda, and the impacts of land access policies in the post-conflict period. It also seeks to understand better the roles international humanitarian agencies and NGOs have played, and how their performance can be improved. It is not suggested that Rwanda is typical, but rather that the centrality of land issues there has thrown up a revealing set of broader questions.

The briefing ends with the following lessons;

This report is part of a broader comparative effort by the Overseas Development Institute’s Humanitarian Policy Group on Land Tenure in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations, which aims to inform and improve the policy and practice of humanitarian action and to inform related areas of international policy. It seeks to understand how land issues affect and are affected by violence and conflict resolution, what responses are appropriate and what lessons can be learned from specific contexts of land tenure interventions, both during and after conflict.

This Regional Law regulates land tenure and land management and establishes plenary powers of public administration in this sphere. It establishes minimum and maximum land plot areas, pertaining to public and municipal land, that can be allotted in ownership to citizens for the following purposes: (a) for farming – from 5 to 300 ha; (b) for gardening – from 0,02 to 0,50 ha; (c) for horticulture – from 0,02 to 0,50 ha; (d) for animal husbandry – from 5 to 16 ha; and (e) for countryside housing construction – from 0,04 to 0,25 ha.