Madagascar: strong concerns around the new land law
At its last meeting on 10 November, the Committee's experts exchanged views on recent legislative developments in Madagascar and expressed their concerns regarding the likely adoption of Law 2021-06. This calls into question the recognition of customary land rights and leads to a reversal of the decentralized land management process that had been under way since 2005.
The government today dissolved the Land Related Problem-Solving Commission that was formed by the KP Sharma Oli government on 22 March 2020.
The commission was formed to provide land to landless people across the country and to manage informal settlers. It had a tenure of three years.
The commission was headed by Devi Prasad Gyawali, who had lost Bharatpur Metropolitan City's mayoral race to CPN-Maoist Centre candidate and CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal's daughter Renu Dahal.
Opondo Cathy, (not real name due to the sensitivity of the matter), has never owned even a small radio in her entire life. This is a clear indication that the villager may not be aware of critical developments in the country. And this does not come as a shock, since the first time she heard the news of the COVID-19 in Uganda was when she visited her neighbor who’s 500 meters away from her home, barely a month after Uganda had even registered a first case COVID-19.
7,500 families have been saved from mass evictions by Kenya Defence Forces 78 Battalion.
A report by Nation on Sunday, May 16, indicated that KDF was stopped from carrying out further evictions on the 17,000-acre parcel of land located in Tigania East, Meru County.
The freeze orders were issued by the Land and Environment Court in a case filed by 13 of the victims.
The team moved to court at the beginning of May to protest the move by KDF to take over the parcel arguing at the time that the battalion had begun the process of evicting residents.
Hundreds of families who were left homeless after the demolition of houses in Kinango Sub-county, Kwale County on Friday last week, are now appealing to the government to help them repossess their land from a private developer.
The 200 families’ from Mwamdudu in Bonje area are accusing a private developer of colluding with top government officials and other unscrupulous individuals to grab their ancestral land.
Augur Investments through its chief operations officer Tatiana Aleshina has implicated President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the land dispute in which the City of Harare entered into agreement with the company.
In a sworn affidavit before the High Court in response to Harare North legislator Norman Markham, Savings Scheme and Jacob Pikicha High Court application (case number HC 425/21) seeking reversal of the agreement, Aleshina implicated the President, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and legal affairs Permanent Secretary Ms Virginia Mabhiza.
DORDABIS residents have threatened war if the government fails to meet their demands listed in a petition they handed over last week, which land reform minister Calle Schlettwein said he had not received as of yesterday.
This is despite Windhoek rural constituency councillor Piet Adams confirming to The Namibian that he presented the petition to the minister's office.
Dordabis residents staged a demonstration last week over their landlessness and to demand an improvement in their living conditions.
Documented as part of the World Bank study Land Policy Reform for Agricultural Transformation in India by NRMC Centre for Land Governance, this series of case studies analyzes recent interventions by government and non-government organizations to secure land tenure rights for poor farmers—especially the landless, tenants and women, resulting in increased access to agricultural land, markets, finance, and services. These seven cases span formal and customary tenure regimes from six states of India, from Kerala in the South to Manipur in North East India.
Nepal has stepped into yet another and very important milestone in guaranteeing security of tenure and access to land for all. Following the promulgation of the new Constitution in September 2015, the Government of Nepal amended the Lands Act of 1964 through enacting a Lands (Seventh Amendment) Act in 2018 which provided a legal framework for implementation of Article 40 (5) of the Constitution on the provision of land to landless Dalits.
In a bid to expedite the distribution of land ownership certificates to the landless people and decentralise the federal responsibility, the government has formed committees of the Landless Squatters' Problems Resolution Commission in all the 77 districts of the country. Each of the seven-member committees will include a chairperson and two others appointed by the government, with the remaining members representing the district Land Revenue Office, Survey and Forest Offices and the District Coordination Committee.
Attempts by the Agricultural Land Reform Office (Alro) to revamp its regulations to allow Sor Por Kor landholders to use their plots for non-agricultural purposes have raised real doubts about possible foul play, as illegitimate windfalls could be handed over to the rich and unscrupulous politicians.
Under its new policy, non-farming activities to be allowed under the new regulations being vetted in parliament include running apartment buildings, gas stations and food-processing plants, among others. Illegal occupants will be made tenants of state land.