Includes agriculture, pro-poor growth and rural livelihoods: debates, scales and guidelines; land, farm size and food security; supermarkets and contract farming; gender and agricultural growth; promoting agriculture in post-conflict states. A number of Topic Guides are being produced for DFID’s Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Advisers.

Highlights the role of European Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in possible land grabs and questionable forestry projects in Africa. Documents 9 cases involving 8 of the European DFIs in Cameroon, DR Congo, Sao Tome, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. Raises the need for more independent research into these projects and for much more scrutiny of DFI investment portfolios, both by DFIs themselves and national parliaments. DFIs need to be placed under proper democratic scrutiny and their investments held to account by parliaments.

Official report from the European Forum on the sessions relating to land tenure reform and poverty reduction. Details the panel discussion involving Robin Palmer (Oxfam), Julian Quan (DFID), Christian Graefen (GTZ), Annelies Zoomers (CEDLA), Philippe Lavigne-Delville (GRET), followed by summaries of two working groups, on Madagascar and Mali and Latin America, and concludes with agreed action points.

Report of a workshop at the LSE. Contains list of participants, outline of the workshop and discussion notes by Gavin Capps, report on the workshop by Simon Batterbury, and remarks prepared for the workshop by Abie Ditlhake (South African NGO Coalition). The workshop aimed to grasp recent changes in land policy in South Africa and enable activists and analysts to take stock and discuss responses. Includes discussion of paper by Ruth Hall and Gavin Williams and presentation by Ben Cousins.

Contains review of women’s access to land, research overview of women’s land tenure status in East Africa, harnessing women’s agency to secure women’s access to land, the role of intermediary institutions in increasing women’s land tenure security.

A critical analysis of the draft Land Policy. Contains introduction, land delivery system and accessibility to land, title deeds on customary land, vestment of land, land market, gender issues, allocation to foreigners (with particular reference to white farmers from Zimbabwe), dispute resolution, land management information systems, concluding remarks.

Contains the forest peoples of Africa: land rights in context; land rights under international law: historical and contemporary issues.

Includes context, project objectives, coverage, cost, delivery and achievements, beneficiaries – communications and targeting, gender, innovations, employment and training, lesson learning, flexibility, geographical scope, government ownership and political will, sustainability, capacity of the justice sector to address land disputes, reliability and scalability of approach taken.

Contains framing human rights in the global land rush; the impact of land grabbing on human rights; EU actors’ involvement in land grabbing; understanding investment webs; 5 mechanisms linking the EU to land grabs; the extraterritorial obligations of the EU and its member states; the EU’s response to land grabbing; conclusions and recommendations.

Discusses the human rights issues raised by large-scale land deals for plantation agriculture (‘land grabbing’) in low and middle-income countries. Finds that it is a serious issue requiring urgent attention. Conceptualises the link between land deals and human rights, reviews relevant international human rights law and discusses evidence on actual and potential human rights impacts. Finds that important human rights dimensions are at stake and that compressions of human rights have been documented in some contexts.

Includes evolution of communal areas in Zimbabwe, research context and findings, processes leading to matongo, vulnerability of women’s land access, bargaining for land in patrimonial governance systems.

Series of country papers on HIV/AIDS and land in Lesotho, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, with concluding paper on methodological and conceptual issues. The key questions addressed include: The impact on and changes in land tenure systems (including patterns of ownership, access, and rights) as a consequence of HIV/AIDS with a focus on vulnerable groups. The ways that HIV/AIDS affected households are coping in terms of land use, management and access, e.g. abandoning land due to fear of losing land, renting out due to inability to utilise land, distress sale of land, etc.