Following last week’s meeting of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), this piece reflects on a key CFS soft-law instrument. It is an edited extract from the article “International Soft-Law Instruments and Global Resource Governance: Reflections on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure”, Law, Environment and Development Journal (2017) 13(2):115-133. The full article can be freely downloaded at https://lead-journal.org/content/17115.pdf.

This week the Global Land Tools Network holds its seventh partners meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Ahead of the meeting, PRIndex’s country engagement lead David Ameyaw explains how we will be working with agencies in more than 30 countries to lay the foundations for a global property rights conversation.

Security in our homes matters to all of us. PRIndex data helps show how it matters to countries too.

Addressing gender disparities in the context of land reforms is not easy. Effectively addressing gender issues takes time and effort, which can sometimes make it more expensive in the initial stages of a project or program. However, evidence shows that integrating gender throughout land reform interventions not only increases benefits for women, but strengthens the intervention overall. Meaningfully including gender into land reform approaches often requires a change in behavior among decision-makers and program participants that, in some cases, may take years, even decades.

Much of the world’s rural landscapes are technically managed by national governments with limited recognition of, or support for, the rights and management responsibilities of the rural poor who live in these areas. In an era of large-scale land acquisitions for global commodity production, this has led, in some cases, to governments allocating vast tracts of land and resources to companies with limited or no consultation of the people affected.

As part of the Feed the Future initiative, USAID is helping the Government of Tanzania to improve communities’ understanding of land rights, support village land use planning, and clarify, document and certify property rights.

2018 could be transformative for the indigenous and community land rights movement, with unprecedented opportunities for scaling up rights recognition around the world.

On Nov. 13 in Bahrain, the Inter-Agency Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators voted to reclassify SDG Land Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to Tier II status.  This is a significant win for the property rights community, and a validation that a coordinated effort from many different players can indeed make a difference.

However, the road there was not easy.

On 12^th November 2017, the 6^th meeting of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) reached a major decision to reclassify tenure security Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to II in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain. This decision marks the beginning of a global journey to monitor tenure security for all, using comparable land indicators for globally comparable data.

The 6th meeting of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), is very important.

By Andy White, Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative

By Julia Christian, Forest Governance Campaigner for FERN

Michoacán’s indigenous communities’ greatest resource is their forests. And they defend them with their lives.