Study in the Oromiya and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples regions of Ethiopia assesses the impacts of land registration and certification since 2004, including joint certification for husbands and wives. Includes gender implications of land certification and empowerment of women, position of polygamous wives, perceptions of benefits of the reform, recommendations.

The current Ethiopian government originated in a Marxist revolutionary movement, which early in its struggle against the Derg regime recognized the widespread discrimination against women in Ethiopian society and placed gender emancipation at the centre of its revolutionary strategy.

Contains the common goal, delivery challenges, five stories and takeaways, larger lessons.

There is today a growing awareness of the importance of providing rural populations with more secure tenure to land and other natural resources, not least in Africa where approximately 90 percent of all land is still unregistered. At the same time there has been a rethinking of approaches for securing local tenure rights in practice. Experience has shown that the conventional approach, i.e., individual freehold titling, has often not worked well in areas where communal forms of customary tenure predominate, which is still the case in most parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper discusses issues surrounding indigenous land rights, sharing an understanding and information about land tenure and titling within Latin America. The study focuses on examples from the country level, with the aim of influencing policy coherence and legislation.In particular, Chapter four of this document examines the implications of indigenous land tenure for natural resource management, using case studies from Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru.

This policy brief explores the importance of land issues in forced displacement in Kenya, drawing out their implications for current humanitarian and early recovery interventions in the wake of the violence and displacement that followed the 2007 elections. Key messages nclude:

Since the early 1990s, the dominant consensus in the debate on land rights reform in sub-Saharan Africa has been that external interventions to privatise land rights are usually inappropriate and likely to remain so.

This paper examines the fundamentals of Mozambican land policy from a livelihoods perspective and identifies considerable potential for improving the sustainability of rural livelihoods and the flexibility and cost effectiveness of policy instruments aimed at increasing security of tenure.The paper examines the impact of the cancellation of private land applications in one province, and argues that, notwithstanding the apparent official reluctance to implement this element of the policy, the impact has been almost wholly beneficial for local community groups.Challenges to land policy framew

An overlap in the regulation of access to land and resources between customary and state management systems is causing problems of contradiction and conflict. This report analyses the pros and cons of both systems and makes a series of recommendations.State administration of land is found to have worked against poorer elements in Ghana. Whilst the Lands Commission and other institutions have made some positive achievements there is no evidence of practical benefits for the majority. Compulsory acquisition has resulted in displacement, landlessness and social unrest.

The Indian state of West-Bengal saw two major turnarounds in its rural sector in the eighties. The growth rate of rice production jumped from 1.8 per cent during 1960-80 to 4.7 per cent during 1977-94, and rural poverty fell from 73 to 31 per cent between 1973 and 1999, greatly surpassing achievements of other Indian states.This coincided with the 1977 election of a coalition of left-wing parties, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, which held uninterrupted power for the following 26 years.

Although many African countries have adopted highly innovative and pro-poor land laws, lack of implementation hinders their potentially far-reaching impact on productivity, poverty reduction, and governance. To assess the effects of these pro-poor land laws and analyse whether the existing doubts are justified, this report draws on the experience of Ethiopia which, over a period of 2-3 years, registered the majority of rural lands in a rapid process at rather low cost.

This paper summarises the findings of a short exercise to identify land issues in present-day Afghanistan.