[via UNDP, 2008] These 4 Policy Briefs from UNDP show how increasing knowledge about gender relations and empowerment has highlighted the importance of access to and control over land within intra-household gender relations, and what this implies for broader concerns about empowerment of the poor. Moreover, significant knowledge gaps are also found in discussions on the link between land policies and cultural, territorial and gender empowerment issues.
In particular, Policy Briefs 2 and 4 provide specific information and analysis in regard to gender and women’s land rights.
Land Policy Brief 1- This brief argues that land policies and democratic governance are linked. Land policies are crucial for poverty reduction and empowerment. Yet assessments of success and failure of land policies seldom take the multi-dimensional nature of land into account. Land policies as a vehicle of empowerment and a consequence of given democratic governance institutions and practices still needs to be properly understood.
Land Policy Brief 2- This brief attempts to highlight some key features of pro-poor land policy. The meaning of land, land resources, or land policy is diverse across, and con tested within, local and national settings. The diversity of the policy questions required to address land issues is perhaps one of the key reasons why ‘land policy’ is the popular phrase used to refer to all policies that have something to do with land.
Land Policy Brief 3- Land policies are not neutral instruments. It is critical to be conscious of the various broad types of possible trajectories and outcomes of land policies’ impact on existing land-based social relations. This brief summarizes four possible broad types: redistribution, distribution, non (re)distribution and (re)concentration.
Land Policy Brief 4- Governments and civil society groups often pursue land tenure reforms as a way to increase tenure security, redress past wrongs, reduce poverty, or respond to political agitation. Land tenure reform also frequently follows social upheaval or political transition. Land tenure reform, however, takes different forms, each of which has its own implications for impact on the poor, for involvement by central and local governments groups, and for democratic participation.
To read the Policy Briefs in full, please see attached pdfs.