Summaries and selected replays from the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum are available below. Full replays of the plenary sessions will be posted shortly -- check back soon!

Instruments like the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) are "voluntary", i.e., legally non-binding. These instruments are intended to have a direct influence on the governance of the tenure practice of states by providing an internationally recognized set of principles, and by simultaneously encouraging good practices.

A Colombian Mayor surprises her constituents with land titles and uses live video and social media to spread civic messages about formalizing land tenure

Fuentedeoro’s Mayor, Patricia Mancera, took the world on a digital tour of her town. On Monday last week, Mancera’s team went live on Facebook, while walking door-to-door to deliver registered property titles to dozens of neighbors living in Fuentedeoro’s urban center.

By Owen Dhliwayo and Refiloe Joala

En périphérie de la Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), il semble qu’on soit incapable de freiner l’étalement urbain, que ce soit dans Lanaudière, les Basses-Laurentides ou sur la Rive-Sud, en Montérégie.

Par: Robert Dutrisac*

About 350 land actors from government, academia, civil society and business came together from more than 15 states and outside India to discuss and debate various land issues. In more than 30 sessions, about 150 speakers and panelists deliberated over 3 days around interdisciplinary land-conversations to generate important information and evidence for policy, practice and academics.

Ten important land messages that emerge from these land conversations are:

India-Land and Development Conference (ILDC) – 2020 held in New Delhi from March 2 to 4 saw a lively debate on a wide range of issues relating to India’s land sector. More than 100 academicians, young researchers, activists and policy makers made their presentations in the conference spread across 34 thematic and two plenary sessions. More than 350 delegates participated in the event. 

The land sector is increasingly being cited as a corruption hub. Many countries across the globe are grappling with land-related corruption that dates to the colonial years and which have metamorphosed into historical injustices and continue to be a source of conflict and violation of basic human rights. Cases of land grabbing, compensation-less expropriation, gender-based discrimination in accessing and ownership of land and related resources, illegal mining deals, bribing to access land administration services among others are not new in the lands sector.

This blog is a summary of a paper that assesses the effectiveness of a specific land tenure intervention to improve the lives of women, by asking new questions of available project data sets.

“This plot is not for sale” are the six words you will find, marked on a lot of properties and plots of land in Uganda. The words are meant to ward off quack land or property brokers and conmen. Most of the cases handled in courts in Uganda, and Kampala in particular, are fraud-related cases (like selling land while the true owners are away using counterfeit titles) and land transaction fraud (when fake land titles are obtained and sadly some officers in the land registry are involved).

Last week the World Cocoa Foundation, a membership organization of more than 100 cocoa companies, held its annual partnership meeting in Berlin, Germany. The aim of the meeting is for governments, cocoa companies and farmers to identify and tackle the sector’s largest sustainability challenges. A 90-minute session was devoted to the topic of land tenure. The prominence of the session, as well as the seniority of the presenters – the Head of Sustainable Sourcing for Hershey’s and the Deputy Director General of Cote d’Ivoire’s Land Agency among them – is a powerful signaling effect.