BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in India, that has triggered massive protests, highlights nomadic tribes’ vulnerability and lack of land rights, activists said.

According to the police, the girl was kidnapped, gang raped and killed in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of a plot by Hindu residents to evict her nomadic Bakkarwal community from a village where they had temporarily settled.

The Kuchi nomads traditionally migrate in winter from eastern and central Afghanistan to graze their herds inside Pakistan

PHNOM PENH, Feb 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Donors have refused to support 200,000 nomadic herders in Afghanistan who are running out of food and stranded with their dying animals after Pakistan closed the border, blocking access to pastureland, an aid group said on Monday.

Rangelands are land areas with indigenous vegetation, including grass and shrubs, and used as a natural ecosystem for grazing livestock and wildlife. Rangelands occupy nearly half of the world’s land surface and include more than a third of global biodiversity hotspots, as well as habitat for 28% of the world’s endangered species.

Dynamic country portfolios combine detailed narratives with Linked Open Data to provide comprehensive overviews of land governance systems

Developed in partnership with local experts and organizations, Land Portal’s latest country portfolios for Kenya, South Africa and Zambia on the Land Portal offer an in-depth look at both the current and historical land governance situation as well as access to a wide range of

Thousands of pastoralists in northern Ngorongoro district made homeless as homes torched to protect wild game

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania

Simat Rotiken and his family are braving cold nights huddled under a tree after their homestead was burned down in a scheme to protect a disputed wildlife corridor.

They were driven from their pastures by security forces in a government policy aimed at securing the Loliondo Game Controlled Area next to the Serengeti National Park.

Climate change, soil degradation and rising wealth are shrinking the amount of usable land in Africa. But the number of people who need it is rising fast.

By Jeffrey Gettleman

LAIKIPIA, Kenya — The two elders, wearing weather-beaten cowboy hats with the strings cinched under their chins, stood at the edge of an empty farm, covering their mouths in disbelief.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Mokoro is pleased to share news of the successful completion of fieldwork in the fourth of six phases of our WOLTS pilot study in both Mongolia and Tanzania. WOLTS is a major multi-country strategic action-oriented research project in support of the land rights of women and vulnerable groups. The WOLTS team is well underway with preparing two major reports of our country research findings, to be launched, respectively, in May and June this year.

By: Xu Shanshan

Date: January 5th 2017

Source: ECNS.cn

Due to rapid urban area expansion, some 300,000 sq. km of particularly fertile cropland will be lost by 2030.

Source: Leadership News

Author: Andrew Essein

The effective and efficient deployement of land resources as a method to resolving the pesistant clashes between farmers and herdsmen has again come to the fore with stakeholders and policy makers in the lands and agricultural sector calling for collaboration in the application of the appropriate land governance laws towards mitigating the ugly trend.

By: Helen Tugendhat, Forest Peoples Programme

Date: September 23rd 2016

Source: Brettonwoods Project

• World Bank grants waiver of indigenous peoples policy for Tanzania project

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  US abstains from vote on project waiver

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  Indigenous peoples highlight lack of consent, question protection of land rights

By: Kiarie Njoroge

Date: August 1st 2016

Source: AllAfrica.com / Daily Nation

Pastoralists are set to benefit from a Sh7.7 billion World Bank loan expected to ease losses related to drought and disease.

The financing is expected to cater for a range of activities including water provision, re-seeding of rangelands, animal vaccination and storing fodder to ensure increased yields for about 93,000 pastoralist households.