This virtual side event was proposed as part of the 2020 SDG High Level Political Forum which was held from 7th to 16th July 2020. It was organised by the SDG Land Momentum Group, an informal group of civil society organizations and multilateral agencies which advocate the implementation of the land targets of the SDGs and support their monitoring.
In 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) commissioned a gender assessment of the agriculture and rural sector in Papua New Guinea. The assessment was carried out in consultation with the Women in Agriculture Development Unit (WiADU) of the National Department of Agriculture and Livestock (NDAL), in line with FAO- Papua New Guinea’s continued commitment to support the Government of Papua New Guinea.
In 2015 we celebrated world leaders’ recognition of the foundational and strategic role that secure land rights for all –women and men, regardless of ethnicity, religion, place of residence, or civil, economic, social, or political status—must play to achieve a world free of poverty, hunger and systemic gender discrimination.
Within the framework of implementing the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), this paper summarizes the empirical findings from three sequentially related phases of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) VGGT programme, implemented as a pilot project in 2018. The methodology used relied first on context analysis of the critical aspects influencing and hindering women´s land rights.
This brief draws from USAID’s experience supporting systematic land documentation in Zambia to further advance awareness and knowledge about the relationship between gender-based violence (GBV) and the access, use, and control of land and property. It aims to inform current and future design and implementation of programs that promote land-based investment and land rights (particularly women’s land rights) by civil society organizations, other donors, and the private sector.
Most literature on land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa has presented women as a homogenous group. This study uses evidence from Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to show that women have differentiated problems, needs, and statuses in their quest for land access and tenure security. It illustrates how women-to-women differences influence women’s access to land. By investigating differentiations in women’s land tenure in the three countries, the study identifies multiple and somewhat interlinked ways in which differentiations exist in women’s land tenure. It achieved some key outcomes.
The Centre of Studies for Peace and Development (CEPAD) with support from UN Women, conducted participatory action research over a period of 12 months in order to examine women’s access to justice in the plural legal system of Timor-Leste with a focus on women’s rights to land and property.
In this onepager, you can find details on the LAND-at-scale project in Zimbabwe. This project is implemented by FAO and BEAT, and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.
-- This project was discontinued in 2022 --
Why do activist groups representing some of society’s most marginalized employ legalistic forms of ‘rights talk’ when the reality of securing rights via the judicial system is almost unimaginable? The article considers this question in relation to the work of the Malaysian non-governmental organisation (NGO) EMPOWER who, in 2011, produced the Malaysian Women’s Human Rights Report focusing attention on the rights of informal sector workers, refugees, sexual minorities and women’s rights under non-Islamic family law.
Women have largely been excluded from the ownership and control of land in Pakistan, which is the single most important source of income and status in the agricultural economy. This systematic exclusion stems from multiple factors at both the policy and societal level, which include multiple and contradictory sources of law that fail to resolve the issue of women’s right to property as well as cultural bias and discriminatory practices that arise from the prevalent male-dominant mindset in rural areas.
While there is no right to land codified in international human rights law, the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), provides for women’s right to own and inherit property without discrimination on the basis of sex. Afghanistan ratified CEDAW in 2003, without reservations. CEDAW (Article 14) also calls for rural women to have equal access to economic opportunities, to credit and loans, social security programs, and to adequate living conditions, including access to housing.
This practitioner’s guide explains how to promote gender-responsive forest tenure reform in community-based forest regimes. It is aimed at those taking up this challenge in developing countries. There is no one single approach to reforming forest tenure practices for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. Rather, it involves taking advantage of opportunities that emerge in various institutional arenas such as policy and law-making and implementation, government administration, customary or community-based tenure governance, or forest restoration at the landscape scale.