News on Land

Having a title, deed or lease is the key that turns informal occupants into citizens, yet 70 percent of the world's people still live without documented property rights

The lack of a strong land record keeping system is partially responsible for the slow recovery from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. With as many as 700,000 households lacking clear titles to land and homes, aid to rebuild properties has been denied to many.

LA PAZ, Apr 2 2019 (IPS) - The ancient Qhara Qhara nation began a battle against the State of Bolivia in defence of its rich ancestral lands, in an open challenge to a government that came to power in 2006 on a platform founded on respect for the values and rights of indigenous peoples.

Men and women from the Qhara Qhara indigenous people marched nearly 700 km over the space of 41 days, between the official capital, Sucre, and La Paz, the country’s political hub, to protest that the fragmentation of their ancestral lands threatens their culture.

A two-day meeting of the Transboundary Law Enforcement Technical Committee for the Tai-Grebo-Krahn-Sapo forest landscape from March 26-27, 2019, sponsored by USAID through the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change ( WABiCC), has successfully ended in Monrovia, an FDA release has said.

At this week’s 20^th Annual World Bank Land and Poverty Conference in Washington DC, a new campaign called Stand For Her Land has been launched.

A new report on the status of gender equality in Rwanda that was launched last week shows that the country recorded significant gains on several fronts on the basis of promoting gender equality

 The new index shows that Rwanda has, for the past 25 years, achieved unprecedented progress in gender equality on economic transformation, social transformation and transformational governance.

It, however, reveals that there are prevailing challenges.

• Technically this means results-based payments for forest-related carbon reductions can be rolled out, but there is no framework for such a system yet.
• Some forestry experts remain skeptical of REDD+ and its approach to forest management.

The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, an indigenous people in the heart of South America, has finally secured a key part of its territory after a 26 year struggle.

Ayoreo leaders received the ownership papers to 18,000 hectares of their ancestral land.

On Friday morning, Palestinian residents of al-Farisieh village, in the northern Jordan Valley, were surprised to find out that Israeli settlers had fenced dozens of dunams of their land and planted them with olive trees. This transgression on the land is part of a series of daily appropriation and infringements on land, by settlers and the occupation authorities in the Jordan Valley, with a goal to displace its dwellers.

Concerned about rising global temperatures and disastrous consequences, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on Heads of State to attend the Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23, and achieve positive change.

“Don’t come with a speech, come with a plan,” he said, adding: “This is what science says is needed. It is what young people around the globe are rightfully demanding.”

Hundreds of protesters have blocked access to the major Las Bambas copper mine over claims they have been denied a fair share of revenues

CHALLHUAHUACHO, Peru/LIMA March 29 (Reuters) - Peruvian police on Friday freed the leader of an indigenous community that has blocked roads to a major copper mine, but hours later arrested his second-in-command, accusing him of running over police officers while driving drunk.

Government policies have paved the way for investments in mining and agriculture but have placed greater pressure on land and impoverished communities, said the U.N.

BANGKOK - The Laos government has prioritised big infrastructure projects including dams, railways lines and mines that have benefited few people and uprooted the poor from their land, said the top independent expert on poverty at the United Nations.