On April 18-20, the Focus on Land in Africa website (www.wri.org/property-rights-africa) was launched at the World Bank Land Conference in Washington DC. The occasion proved to be a unique opportunity to make the site known to a broad audience of land tenure specialists and elicit their feedback on it.

With the endorsement of the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (RAI) in October, attention turns to how to reflect the principles and practices outlined in the RAI in foreign assistance and public and private investments. The United States’ global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future, already places responsible investment at the core of its programs--including clarifying land rights and maximizing the positive impact of agricultural investments on women, smallholder farmers, and families’ nutritional status.

On June 14, the United States announced a Partnership with Burkina Faso, in coordination with the G8, to improve land governance and strengthen transparency. The Partnership will build on progress achieved under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition Country Cooperation Framework with Burkina Faso, which support a number of the principles of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of the Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

On December 11-14, The United States Institute of Peace – in collaboration with USAID, the World Bank, and the International Organization for Migration – will host a Land, Property and Conflict training course. Tenure insecurity and disputes over land and property often play a major role in conflicts, both internally and intra-state. The international donor community recognizes the importance of addressing complex issues related to land tenure and property rights in order to mitigate conflict, promote stability, and foster peace and economic growth.

Over the past year, USAID has led a global effort in the land and resource governance sector to improve donor coordination and support the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security(Voluntary Guidelines). Working with the Global Donor Working Group on Land, a newly formed group of bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and development agencies, USAID led a data collection and visualization project that gathered information on land and resource governance programs from around the globe.

Last month, USAID’s Rwanda Land Project launched a new website that serves as a comprehensive source of information on land issues, specific to Rwanda. The new website aspires to be a one-stop shop for researchers, civil society organizations, policy makers, and citizens to gain access to:
land policies, laws and regulations;
land-related research and publications;
land news and events;
profiles of organizations that extensively engage in advocacy, communications, policy-making and research around land in Rwanda.

Last week, USAID's May/June 2012 Issue of FrontLines, was released; it features stories on Child Survival and Ethiopia. One of the Ethiopia articles profiles a Land Tenure and Property Rights project. Karol Boudreaux shares project challenges and successes in, "A Powerful Piece of Paper".
 

Participatory mapping workshop in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, September 13 -15, 2011. Photo credit: Tetra Tech / Gary Hunter and Anna Soave
This month, we are highlighting participatory approaches that make land tenure programming more inclusive, effective, and sustainable. USAID uses participatory approaches—approaches that engage local communities and beneficiaries in project design and management—in our efforts to secure and strengthen land tenure and property rights in projects around the world.

A new report from the World Bank suggests that Africa, which is home to half the world’s uncultivated land, can significantly reduce poverty, achieve rapid economic growth, and increase food security by improving land governance systems and strengthening land tenure and resource rights. “Land governance issues need to be front and center in Africa to maintain and better its surging growth and achieve its development promise,” says Frank Byamugisha, author of the report and lead land specialist in the World Bank’s Africa region.

IFPRI has just published a new paper that considers whether or not policy changes related to gender equality and women’s empowerment in Ethiopia are, or are not, mutually reinforcing. One set of changes involves certification of land use rights at the community level. See here for a discussion of USAID’s project supporting these efforts. Certification allows husbands and wives to be listed as joint holders of the rights (these rights are inheritable by the remaining spouse when the other spouse dies).

A guest post by Zemen Haddis Gebeyehu, Senior Agriculture Policy Advisor, USAID/Ethiopia

Strengthening women’s rights to own and inherit property provides them with greater opportunities to generate income and exercise control over family resources, which can improve women’s ability to feed and educate their children. This simple but powerful message is highlighted by Deborah Espinosa’s recent Huffington Post blog In Kenya, Land Rights Bring New Hope for Women and Girls. Espinosa is a senior attorney and land tenure specialist at Landesa, which implements USAID’s Kenya Justice project.