The 2019 Conference on Land Policy in Africa ended in Abidjan Friday November 29th with academic institutions pledging to work with traditional leaders in coming up with solutions to land governance challenges on the continent in an effort to root corruption out of the land sector.

Stakeholders attending the five-day conference made various calls at the end of the meeting but perhaps the most profound one was by the continent’s traditional leaders who made a commitment to review cultural practices and beliefs that have long denied women access to land.

New technologies used to map areas in developing nations for granting titles and aiding development could be misused to further marginalize vulnerable people, analysts and land experts warned on Friday.

From Kenya to the Philippines, authorities are using satellite imagery, drones, GPS navigation systems and artificial intelligence to map customary lands, fix boundaries, and modernize land records to verify ownership and issue titles.

INVESTIGATIONS into the claims of ancestral land by the commission of inquiry established by the government may not necessarily lead to restitution for the dispossessed communities.

The deputy minister of information Engel Nawatiseb made these remarks in a statement issued last week.

During the first week of June we held our very first Research Consortium Women’s Land Rights Grantee Workshop. Held in Geelong, in the state of Victoria in Australia, a representative from each grantee group, the submission reviewers, and representatives from Resource Equity met for three days to share, learn, and challenge each other on the draft research papers that have been produced under this grant.

MONROVIA – One of the decisive moments in social justice advocacies for land rights in the recent history of Liberia came in 2011, when rural communities, wrote a letter of complaint against the Sime Darby Plantation Company to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

European Union (EU)’s Programme Manager for Climate Change and Rural Development, Vera Kellen, says land rights remain the precondition for sustainable development in Africa and the rest of the world.

Madam Kellen made the remarks on Tuesday, June 4, 2019 at the “Sustainable Ownership, Empowering Community and Civil Society Liberia” meeting held at a resort in Monrovia, organized by ForumSYD. The day-long meeting brought together both local and international partners with focus on land rights advocacy and empowerment of CSOs.

Monrovia – A civil society organization, the Foundation for Community Initiatives (FCI), has begun a project to assist rural communities in Liberia to legalize their customary ownership of their lands.

The Protection of Customary Collective Community Land Rights (P3CL) project, which began since January this year and will end in December next year, targets 24 communities in Bong, Grand Bassa, Lofa, River Cess, Nimba and Sinoe Counties.

Oxfam is a global movement of people working together to end the injustice of poverty.

That means we tackle the inequality that keeps people poor. Together we save, protect and rebuild lives. When disaster strikes, we help people build better lives for themselves, and for others. We take on issues like land rights, climate change and discrimination against women. And we won’t stop until every person on the planet can enjoy life free from poverty.

In more than a decade of working on women’s land rights, I have often been asked the question “where is the evidence?” While we have more and more insight into how secure land rights benefit women, men, and communities, the question remains “how to get there?”: we don’t know as much as we should (or would like!) about what works, or does not, to improve land rights for women.

Celebrating Great Deeds in Legal Empowerment

The biennial Grassroots Justice Prize competition is the world’s only competition recognizing grassroots organizations and institutions, large and small, across the globe, that are working to put the power of law into people’s hands.

This year, we are offering 3 prizes of $10,000 USD.

The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year’s CPI, with an average score of just 43.  

The Land Portal Foundation and the NRMC Center for Land Governance are partnering with key organizations to hold a series of three webinars on Forest Rights and Governance in India, Land Rights for Slum Dwellers in the East Indian State Odisha: Making technology work for the urban poor and