Karol Boudreaux has recently penned this article, Addressing Land Rights Can Make Social Change Possible for the Guardian. USAID is delighted to see an important foundation taking a public and carefully articulated stand on this vital development subject. Ms. Boudreaux correctly notes "The challenge is to expand people's opportunity to improve their lives by securing their property rights." This is indeed one of the most fundamental objectives in addressing challenges related to property rights.

Guest commentary by Kent Elbow, Independent Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist.

The PRRGP chief of party, Mark Freudenberger, attended the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) in Tel Aviv, Israel from June 21-24, 2010.
Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development Project (PRADD) COP Attends Kimberley Process Certification Scheme

In Bolivia, where 65 percent of the population is indigenous and 83 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line, landlessness is one of the best predictors of poverty. While the Bolivian government has enacted policies to improve land access and tenure security, progress has been slow and as of 2009, only 37% of Bolivian land had been formally titled.

A guest post by Nayna J Jhaveri, Ph.D., Resource Tenure Specialist, Tetra Tech

On March 14, the Haiti Property Law Working Group released Haiti Land Transaction Manual, Vol. 1: A how-to guide for the legal sale of property in Haiti. This manual is an important step in the reconstruction efforts in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake, which have been greatly impeded by weak land administration systems and the resulting disputes over land and property. The new manual will help Haitians, international donors, and civil society navigate the country’s complex bureaucratic legal system.

Côte d’Ivoire emerged from a decade-long civil war in early 2011, but its diamonds—which played a role in sustaining the conflict—have remained on the world’s black lists. In November 2013, however, the Kimberley Process (KP) Plenary in Johannesburg recognized that Cote d’Ivoire had met minimum requirements of the KP Certification Scheme, the international mechanism to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the world’s markets.

Afghanistan has significant amounts of mineral resources according to an assessment completed by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2007. However, according to a recent article by the New York Times “the potential resource boom seems increasingly imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue.” Control over land and resource rights are increasingly becoming a source of contention, especially as the government begins to make land concessions.

According to a recent article from the IPS News Agency, women in Cameroon produce 80% of the country’s food needs yet own only 2% of the land. Though a 1974 Land Tenure Ordinance provides women with equal rights to property ownership, in reality customary tenure practices which discriminate against women sometimes trump national laws. In some cases, customary systems have provided women with secure rights to use land and resources however, recently women have experience greater difficulties protecting rights under these systems.

A guest post by Dr. Steven Lawry, Global Lead, Land Tenure & Property Rights, DAI
A recent systematic review—funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID)—of quantitative and qualitative literature on the effects of tenure formalization in developing countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, confirmed theories that formal registration of individual land rights increases investment, productivity, and household consumption.

The Botswana High Court recently issued a landmark ruling: four sisters are permitted to inherit their family home even though a customary rule prohibits women from inheriting property. The High Court ruled that the customary rule violated women’s equal rights. Remarkably, the High Court issued its decision in the face of strong government support of the customary rule. The details of this watershed case are featured in a recent article by City Press.

In agrarian societies land serves as the main means not only for generating a livelihood but often also for accumulating wealth and transferring it between generations. How land rights are assigned therefore determines households' ability to generate subsistence and income, their social and economic status (and in many cases their collective identity), their incentive to exert nonobservable effort and make investments, and often their ability to access financial markets or to make arrangements for smoothing consumption and income.