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The global housing and land crisis needs a human rights response
World Habitat Day is meant to remind us to ensure the human right to adequate housing and land for everyone
At 5 a.m. on a cold December morning, the sound of bulldozers woke up Rukshana, a woman in her late fifties. By 6 a.m., her home in Delhi, where she had lived for 35 years, had been demolished and with it her meagre belongings.
Rukshana is just one of the world’s 1.6 billion people estimated to be inadequately housed, over 100 million of whom are considered to be homeless.
Apple grower leads fight for property rights for indigenous Indian women
"In many communities, customary law is used as a tool to deny women their rights to housing, property, land, and inheritance."
BANGKOK - An indigenous woman in northern India is taking her fight for inheritance rights to the country's top court, leading others who are pushing back against sexist laws and customs.
Ratan Manjari, who heads the women's rights group Mahila Kalyan Parishad in Himachal Pradesh state, received land she had inherited from her parents - a rare occurrence where she lives.
Community Land Trusts, Part 1: Understanding the Idea and Possibilities for Favelas
This is the first article in a four-part series on the potential to apply the Community Land Trust (CLT) model under existing Brazilian laws to secure land rights in Brazil’s favelas.
Why Namibians want fresh impetus behind land reform
Twenty-eight years after independence, wealth in Namibia is still skewed along racial lines laid down in the colonial period. The level of inequality is one of the highest in the world, according to the World Bank.
Malawian women struggle for land rights despite equality drive
MWINGITSA, Malawi (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Life was never easy for Salome Nkalawire but when her husband died the mother of four faced her toughest challenge yet.
She lost the small plot of land the couple had bought together and farmed in Mwingitsa village in the south of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world.
When her husband passed away, Nkalawire’s relatives would not allow her to keep the plot because cultural norms dictate that widowed or abandoned women cannot own land, even if they have a legal claim to it.
Land rights and accountability mechanisms key to meeting landscape restoration targets
NAIROBI ( Landscape News) – Degradation of natural resources reduces employment opportunities for at least 11 million young Africans entering the job market every year, and soil and nutrient depletion on croplands cost the continent 3 percent of its gross domestic product. Climate change magnifies the challenge.
A Bridge Too Far? Land Titling For What? Debates on Favelas in Rio Speak Very Different Languages
Two events held on Tuesday, September 18 demonstrated an enormous divide between groups working on issues related to favelas and favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Both events had more than one hundred people present and each featured an influential global thinker to help foster debate.
Central American Women Are Fighting Extractive Industries on their Land—and Winning
The battle to stop the spread of extractive industries pits indigenous and peasant communities against powerful business interests, backed up by politicians who encourage the foreign investments that convert millennial ways of life into cash—for them
Africa's nomadic herders help, not harm, land and planet - U.N.
Pastoralists manage land in way that keeps carbon in soil instead of releasing climate-changing emissions, experts say
TURIN, Italy - Nomadic herders across Africa can work in tandem with farmers and produce sustainable food without damaging the land or harming the planet, experts and pastoralists said on Saturday.
Securing community forest rights is key to achieving climate goals
MONTREAL — Forest areas managed by indigenous and local communities store nearly 300 billion metric tons of carbon — five times more than previously estimated — yet failure for these communities to have their rights formally recognized may lead forest-dependent people unable to protect carbon reserves, a new report claims.