The Symposium on Legal Aspects of Large Scale Investments in Land: Implications for Food Security and Rural Development was held at FAO Headquarters in Rome on March 4th 2011. The Symposium was co-hosted by FAO and the World Food Law Institute at Howard University School of Law.

Este manual de formación se centra en cómo gestionar y resolver conflictos sobre los derechos de tenencia de la tierra, la seguridad de la tenencia y el acceso a la tierra en el campo del desarrollo rural. Resulta de las actividades complementarias realizadas con el Programa de apoyo a los medios de vida, de la FAO, (LSP) y la Unidad de Gestión y Tenencia de la Tierra y con la Coalición Internacional para el Acceso a la Tierra.

FAO’s Land Tenure Notes provide information on land tenure in a format that can be used by grassroots organizations which work with small farmers and others in rural communities. Improving secure access to land by the rural poor is essential in order to reduce poverty and hunger and to promote sustainable rural development. Improving people’s knowledge of their rights to land is an important part of making rights real, thereby allowing people to improve their livelihoods.

SOLA & Open Tenure are open-source software to help protect tenure rights and support the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

Improved access to gender-disaggregated data can be a catalyst to improving gender equality and provide opportunities for the so-called “Third Sector” of non-governmental and local organizations, especially those representing women. The Voluntary Guidelines underline that gender equality is at the core of all processes and aspects of tenure governance, including policy formulation, service delivery, and access to legal systems and information.

This paper reviews the experiences of introducing land consolidation and land banking instruments in Central and Eastern Europe, largely to address the structural problems of small and fragmented farms. The introduction has been uneven with some countries having established operational programmes while others have taken steps with differing levels of success, and a few have not taken action. The paper assesses the driving factors for the introduction and the approaches used in individual countries.

Two important resolutions for women were adopted by the United Nations last year. One was the UNHABITAT Resolution on “Women's Role and Rights in Human Settlements Development and Slum Upgrading” and the other was the Commission on Human Rights Resolution on “Women's Equal Ownership, Access to, and Control over Land and the Equal Rights to Own Property and to Adequate Housing”. These resolutions recognised the violation of women's property rights as a violation of fundamental human rights and the UN's commitment to stop such violations.

Documento de trabajo sobre la tenencia de la tierra 20. Este documento analiza las características del régimen comunal y su función en el sistema de gestión de los recursos naturales en diferentes contextos de algunos países asiáticos. Las presiones actuales del mercado sobre los recursos naturales suponen ya sea desafíos que oportunidades para que las comunidades y los gobiernos utilicen y refuerzen el régimen comunal para promover la gestión sostenible de algunos recursos naturales.

In order to check and promote the positive synergies between private companies and rural households, an analysis of past and ongoing experiences of contract farming is required. It represents the main objective of this report. The objectives of this study are to: describe the effects of contract farming schemes, characterize the factors limiting or promoting these various impacts, identify key findings to promote the emergence of positive synergies.

The report summarises the papers, presentations and discussions of a workshop on failures and achievements at securing women’s land rights. In particular, it addresses the following issues: Land rights and legal reforms,legal aid and land administration practice, women's land rights in an HIV/AIDS context,women's land rights from a food security and livelihoods context. Organised by the FAO and Oxfam, the workshop seeks to establish global and multi-sectoral alliances and multiple strategies as a means of breaking out of the present impasse in this matter.

The present paper seeks to cover the key issues, trends, constraints, challenges, knowledge gaps and policy options on a range of dimensions of land access. Land access is broadly defined as the processes by which people individually or collectively gain rights and opportunities to occupy and utilise land (primarily for productive purposes but also other economic and social purposes) on a temporary or permanent basis.