Recent UNRISD research finds that the new generation of land tenure reforms introduced in the 19990s is not necessarily more gender equitable than earlier efforts, even though women’s ability to gain independent access to land is increasingly on the statutes.

Aims to provide detailed guidance to support the adoption and effective implementation of laws, policies and programmes to protect women’s rights to land and other productive resources. Presents an overview of international and regional legal and policy instruments recognizing women’s rights to land and other productive resources, and discusses ways of advancing a human rights-based approach to them. Sets out recommendations in a range of areas accompanied by explanatory commentaries and good practice examples and case studies from countries.

Brief highlights key attributes of national constitutions, laws, and regulations that play a fundamental role in protecting indigenous and rural women’s rights to community forests and other community lands. These legislative best practices were derived from a 2017 analysis of over 400 national laws and regulations, Power and Potential, which evaluates the extent to which women’s rights to community forests are recognized by national law in 30 low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Examines options for strengthening women’s participatory rights in the face of increasing commercial pressures on land in 3 countries: Mozambique, Tanzania, and the Philippines. Focuses on how regulatory reform – reforms in the rules, regulations, guidelines, and procedures that implement national land acquisition and investment laws – can promote gender equity and allow women to realize the rights afforded by national legal frameworks and international standards.

Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South.

Presentation of civil society views for pro-poor land policies and laws in Zambia. Includes introduction and background; overview of the land policy options paper; context setting for policy development; policy options; implementation framework. Lays emphasis on protection of customary land, ability to convert leasehold back to customary land, need for size limits, 30% state land allocation should go to women, awareness raising on joint registration.

Gives an overview on how to consider gender aspects in projects and programmes addressing land rights. Covers land policy, land legislation, implementation of land laws, enforcement, land administration, example of indicators.

Examines the jurisdiction of the Lands Tribunal, its operations, composition, funding and secretariat. Urges the Government to finalise its draft Land Policy and revise the 1995 Lands Act. Recommends that the Lands Tribunal be decentralised to be accessible to poor women and men, that it publicise its work more and that its capacity and resources be increased. There is also a need to strengthen traditional structures and appeal mechanisms to provide a balance to the power of chiefs.

Includes methodology and research sites; land, the law and women’s rights in Uganda; women’s rights – lost in the land rush; economic policy and land as a commodity; women’s rights activists – promoting women’s land rights; recommendations. Uganda’s eco-feminist movement is one of several working at the interface of environmental degradation, corporate human rights abuses and patriarchy, urgently building women’s campaigning and resistance skills.

A series of submissions by the Zambia Land Alliance on these topics: land as a right; women’s rights to land; vestment and administration of land; conversion of customary land to leasehold tenure; land and the environment; land information; mode of adoption of the Constitution.

Women for Women International has worked with over 84,000 marginalised women in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo and commissioned research to explore these women’s land rights. The study found that the women could not own land, even through inheritance, while men controlled the sales of the items that their wives farmed.

Examines policy and legal reforms in the 1990s; strengths of the 1995 Lands Act and civil society concerns about it; policy framework; Lands Tribunal; women’s constraints in customary land, alienation of land, inheritance and accessing urban land, government attempts to promote women’s access and control over land; conclusions and future challenges.