Position papers distributed to the 2,000 people who attended the South African Government’s National Land Tenure Summit, 4-6 September 2014. Comprises: Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working on Land; Extension of Security of Tenure Amendment Bill; Communal Land Tenure Policy; Communal Property Associations; Agricultural Landholdings Policy; State Land Lease and Disposal Policy. Also an Oped by Ruth Hall, Secure tenure rights or share-holding for farm workers: will government listen?

Presents a legal analysis of the national legislation that relates to Indigenous Peoples’ and communities’ forest tenure rights at a global scale by assessing whether the legal systems of 27 of the most forested developing countries of the world recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples and communities to access, withdraw, manage, exclude and alienate to forest resources and land. The countries included in this study are home to 2.2 billion rural people and include approximately 75% of the forests in the developing world.

Some commercial farmers in Serenje District, Central Province of Zambia, have acquired thousands of hectares while ignoring laws meant to prevent forced evictions. Some have used bulldozers to forcibly evict residents whose families have farmed the land for generations. This has been devastating for the communities and particularly hard on women.

Seeks to guide investigative bodies, judges, and prosecutors engaged with the factual and legal dimensions of land grabbing, as well as advocates, political institutions and companies working to curb this phenomenon. By prosecuting even a few of the most serious instances of the crimes arising from land acquisitions, the ICC can send a strong message to corporations and governments, deterring future violation and beginning to bring justice to victims of illegitimate land seizures.

Describes current land administration practices as understood by traditional structures to unpack some components of existing African tenure arrangements in KwaZulu-Natal. Hoped this will help better to understand how communal land systems operate, regardless of which structure governs them, in order to support practices that secure tenure effectively.

A 78-page list, much of it pretty grim reading. Divided into reports and press cuttings, in alphabetical order. The reports section comprises a ‘1stXI’ of Future Agricultures Consortium, GRAIN, IIED, IISD, Mokoro, Oakland Institute, Oxfam, Pambazuka News, PLAAS, RRI and TNI, followed by a further 36 from Action Aid to the World Resources Institute. The press cuttings cover Global, Africa, 31 African countries or regions from Angola to Zimbabwe, followed by Middle East, Asia and China. Countries with greatest coverage are Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

Contains introduction; global – a new threat to poor people’s land – biofuels, older threats, decentralisation; regional � ten years ago, regional land policy review, 2006-7, donors, governments and civil society, the policy-implementation gap, decentralisation, your research programme – DLRSA; conclusion. Argues that since policy engagement at the national level in the past decade has not brought too many successes, more might be achieved in future at the decentralised local level.

RISD, a Rwandan NGO, presented its study of land use and implementation of villagisation in Kigali Rural, Ruhengeri, Gikongoro and Butare to offer an informed contribution to land policy development and the villagisation process and to stimulate discussion and dialogue through dissemination of its findings. The paper examines the history of the policy, the main determining factors, and the problems which have surfaced. since its inception.

Highly condensed paper on gendered land rights, written principally for Oxfam staff and partners, and summarising some of the literature on Africa and elsewhere.

A short account of the background to a hugely energising conference on global land grabbing held at IDS, Sussex. Over 400 people wanted to write papers for the event, but there was space for only 120. Gives details of the wide scope of the conference, including green grabs.

Explores some dimensions of an international NGO seeking to work globally on land rights. Draws upon the author’s own work as well as Oxfam’s historical experiences. The first part looks at some of Oxfam’s recent work on land rights, at the involvement of DFID on land rights in Africa, at Oxfam’s engagement with the World Bank, and a brief word on USAID. The second part examines some of Oxfam’s work on land rights over the past two decades in Southern Africa – in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Angola. There are concluding thoughts at the end of each section.

The 1,000