Three agreements laid groundwork for possible future land claims, reparations and centuries-long grievances for Métis nations
Growing up as member of Alberta’s Métis community, Audrey Poitras was always acutely aware of the unique struggle her people faced.
In August 2018, the local government of Accra, Ghana, in West Africa, appropriated 1,800 homes for demolition to make way for, among others, tomato retailers. Officials had already begun plotting the land for its new use when residents of the largely poor neighborhood erupted in protest, to no avail.
The extreme usurpation of land wasn't entirely illegal—nor was it entirely legal. And therein lies a new "idiom of planning" overtaking many African cities as they navigate rapid urbanization under competing land ownership and use laws that date back to British Colonial rule.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Borey Kang Meng construction site in the capital’s Dangkor district on Monday to demand the developer honour its promise to divide the site into plots and give them land titles.
One protester from the 140 families locked in the dispute said they had sent a letter to Kaing Yu Meng, the director of Leang Heng Trading and owner of the Borey Kang Meng gated community, demanding he explains why it was taking so long to distribute plots and issue the land titles.
The Liberia Land Authority (LLA) and three Liberian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have agreed to work with 24 communities in eight of the country’s 15 counties to bring two million acres of land under full community ownership and control.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on Friday at the LLA’s office in Monrovia, which is aimed at implementing the Land Rights Law of 2018. The other NGOs partners are Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) and Parley-Liberia.
Reclamation of forest lands, especialy from the possession of poor Adivasi encroachers, has been a messy business as seen during eviction of Guthikoyas in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district in September 2017 and Kolams in Kumram Bheem Asifabad district on June 12. It is quite evident that lack of clear guidelines for resuming encroached forest lands had the Forest Department evict the encroachers rather ‘crudely’ resulting in a sudden upheaval in their lives which includes loss of shelter and livelihood.
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).
ABIDJAN - Every other day, Kouakou Marie Laure wakes up at 1am to fetch water for her family.
The mother of three carries a bucket on her head back and forth to the nearest affordable water source, a couple of kilometres away, about a dozen times to replenish the family's 200-litre tank.
The water usually lasts through two days of drinking, bathing, cleaning, and washing clothes.
Like many other Aboriginal kids in 1938, Isabel Flick was denied an education because she was “too black” to be allowed into the segregated public school.
Her father, a returned serviceman, was disrespected by the nation he had fought for. She and her siblings faced the threat of being taken from their family. She was later called a “trouble maker” for demanding justice for Aboriginal women and children and Aboriginal rights to land.
Peru - To legally obtain title to their community lands, indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon must navigate a maze of legal paperwork and technical steps that can take as long as a decade to complete. The process is frustrating not only for the villagers, but also for the government officials, as discovered in a study by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
For over 40 years, she fought in vain to be allocated just one out 42 acres of the family land which she wanted to till and feed her children.
She was not only denied the small piece of land and barred from practicing any form of farming but also faced an eviction from the property at the tail end of 1999.
EVICTION
As the climate shifts and population grows, land in the Choke Mountain watershed is becoming degraded, causing problems here and further downstream on the Nile
CHOKE, Ethiopia - Sloping fields of barley and potatoes stretching far into the distance are a common sight in the mountains of Ethiopia's northwestern Amhara Regional State.
Local farmer Babel Tena, in a faded jacket and head scarf, has been cultivating low-yielding varieties of barley, beans and potatoes here for more than 40 years.