This article discusses the World Bank's efforts to reform land and real estate markets. It argues that World Bank supported efforts at land and real estate reform have had too narrow a technical focus, at the expense of institutional reform.

This report recounts the experiences of 130 women from various regions, ethnic groups, religions, and social classes in Kenya who have had their property rights flouted because they are women.The report presents evidence that women are excluded from inheriting, evicted from their lands and homes by in-laws, stripped of their possessions, and forced to engage in risky sexual practices in order to keep their property. When they divorce or separate from their husbands, they are often expelled from their homes with only their clothing.

The enclosure of open rangeland and its allocation to individuals or groups is a component of many African livestock development projects. In project after project, however, pastoralists have declined to fence or reallocate ownership of their land according to project specifications. It would now appear that the promise of a more efficient system of livestock production and range management is not, in itself, sufficient to induce pastoralists to adopt a fenced system of ranching.

Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc.

The main argument of this paper is that insecurity of land tenure is a socio-political condition that can be made and unmade. This discussion paper focuses on customary land rights, particularly in the African context. The paper reveals that:

The present land tenure situation in Uganda is essentially the result of four factors: customary tenure practices, the mailo tenure system introduced under the British colonial administration, the Land Reform Decree passed by Idi Amin’s government in 1975, and the disrupting social order under the Amin regime and during the period following its downfall. The impacts of the Land Reform Decree and civil disobedience have led to the degradation of common property resources, particularly forest areas and pastures.

The ultimately disappointing results of past redistributive reforms caused contemporary policy-makers in Latin America to search for alternatives. In recent years, the issue of transforming tenure structure through the market mechanism has moved into the spotlight. This paper argues that it is extremely helpful to approach the topic from an institutional perspective. The institution of property rights is central to the discussion. New questions emerge: How are transactions actually being carried out in the rural setting?

Examining the assumption that private property rights create incentives for the management of resources, this paper argues that private property rights and current wildlife conservation and management laws and policies in Kenya fail to provide the solution to wildlife biodiversity erosion.

In this paper, the results of a recent case study of forest conservation and management in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan, India are reported. Changes in land use, grazing, household fuelwood collection and inadequate management institutions are identified as key factors causing forest degradation. The paper demonstrates that quantitative analysis, employing data from fairly large samples of households and villages, is a useful supplement to the qualitative methods dominating in studies of conservation and natural resource management institutions.

Despite advances in the international rights regime, persistent discrimination evident in the customary laws which regulate women's status in most traditional societies was a constant factor across cultural, social and political divides. The case-histories and testimonies recorded by the Kigali Consultation provide an insight into changes in land and inheritance rights brought about by conflict and its attendant social disruptions.

This fact sheet explores the issue of women’s property and inheritance rights and its relationship with HIV/AIDS.It argues that while property and inheritance rights are important for women generally, they take on dramatically increased importance in the context of HIV and AIDS.

This case study, published in the journal Conservation and Society, examines the impact of forest reforms in Bolivia on the indigenous Yuracaré people.

The recent surge in the efforts to reform forest governance-both through decentralisation and tenure reforms has been coupled by an increase in empirical studies that assess the virtues and limitations of the new regimes. Despite an increasing body of literature, however, there is still limited knowledge about the effects of these reforms on the indigenous groups and their forest governance institutions.