ONDON/BOSTON, April 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Activists are urging Commonwealth leaders meeting in Britain this week to throw their weight behind a campaign to preserve a centuries-old communal land ownership system on the Caribbean island of Barbuda.

After Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1834, Barbudans developed a system of communal land ownership, now threatened by government plans to introduce private land ownership to boost development and tourism.

Rare victory for Brazilian poor, as record Amazon land tract is handed over to descendants of escaped enslaved people

It was a modest ceremony for such a significant victory: it is not every day that the descendants of enslaved people are given the title to their land. But there was no doubt of its importance at a time when the protection of Brazil’s traditional rural communities is threatened by a conservative government in league with powerful agribusiness interests.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa took a step on Tuesday to hasten the transfer of land from white to black owners when parliament backed a motion seeking to change the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation.

The ruling African National Congress has long promised reforms to redress racial disparities in land ownership and the subject remains highly emotive more than two decades after the end of apartheid. Whites still own most of South Africa’s land following centuries of brutal colonial dispossession.

Monrovia – The race for land ownership is one of big issues in Liberia that has been engulfed with multiplicity of problems ranging from insecure land tenure forms and rights; lack of land use database for state, private, and customary lands; weak land administration and management; inadequate concession practices and protective mechanisms to prevent “land-grabbing” amongst others.

These issues are causing serious problems for communities’ dwellers to get land for making their farms particularly in rural areas.

PALAKKAD: The alienation of land and the government machinery’s failure to provide alternate land to the adivasis of Attappadi even under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) has only led to further marginalisation of these sections. The ghastly incident in which Madhu was fatally assaulted by a group of persons goes to show how vulnerable the 33,000-odd Adivasis of 192 ‘oorus’(tribal hamlet) of Attappadi are in the hands of the mainstream population.

MAGDALENA AKINYI* HAD a feeling something was amiss when, in 2012, total strangers started coming over to survey her land in Kakamega. The 46-year-old mother of four eventually found out that her husband, who was working in Nairobi, had married a second wife and sold the 4 hectares of land that he and Akinyi had purchased together during their 12 years of marriage.

“I confirmed he had sold the land, and I decided to sue them both – my husband and the buyer – for violation of the law, as my husband had not consulted me before selling the land,” Akinyi says.

Morris Kidir gestures at a wide expanse of dark-green land he says was earmarked for a school or clinic in his northern Liberian village, now covered in young oil palm trees.

In October last year, he recalls, workers from Malaysian conglomerate Sime Darby arrived at the plot and began filling in the only gap left in a forest of palms that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Colombia - Recognition of collective land tenure rights in Colombia is among the strongest in Latin America: there has been constitutional backing since 1991, and more than 30 million hectares of forests have already been designated as indigenous land. However, this legal protection often falls short of securing rights on the ground.

The Yogyakarta Indonesian Ombudsman (ORI Yogyakarta) says a 1975 Yogyakarta deputy gubernatorial instruction cannot be used as a legal basis for the State Land Agency (BPN) to reject the registration of land ownership status transfers requested by Chinese-Indonesians. 

“This is in line with a Supreme Court ruling issued in 2015 that declared the instruction invalid,” said Budhi Masthuri of ORI Yogyakarta on Monday.  

Monday marks the anniversary of the clash in the Muthanga forest in 2003 that is considered the worst police action against the community in the state.

On Monday, Adivasis in Kerala observed the 15th anniversary of what is considered the worst police action against the community in the state’s history. On February 19, 2003, the police evicted hundreds of Adivasis who had occupied the Muthanga forest in Wayanad district to protest the delay in the government’s distribution of cultivable land that it had promised to all landless Adivasis in the state.

Lakshadweep and Meghalaya are the best among all 35 states and union territories of India at providing land rights to women, while Punjab and West Bengal are the worst, according to an index created by the Bhubaneswar-based Center for Land Governance, an arm of consultancy firm NR Management Consultants (NRMC).

ORANG Asli from six kampung have formed several blockades in Gua Musang, Kelantan, this morning to protest against the logging activities in the forest reserve which encroach into their land.

Mohd Syafiq Dendi, chairman of the customary land territory in Pos Simpor, said the protesters have set up three blockades at Chawas, Tohoi and Kuala Wok early today.

“The blockades started this morning. This is against logging and commercial farming. 

“They are encroaching into Orang Asli territory. Stop the logging now,” he told The Malaysian Insight.