Across rural Africa, land legislation struggles to be properly implemented, and most resource users gain access to land on the basis of local land tenure systems.
Women and childrens' insecure rights to property and inheritance in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is not a new issue. The extended family support systems that used to function as social safety nets for widows and orphaned children have weakened as a consequence of societal changes such as economic development, migration and urbanization. This situation has clearly been exacerbated by the AIDS epidemic. Though prevalence is starting to level off, or even decline, in several high prevalence countries, this comes after years of increasing prevalence.
Through a conceptual analysis based on international treaties and instruments and through two country studies, this study explores the relationship between human rights, particularly the right to adequate food, and access to natural resources with specific focus on land.
Issues of transformative change in gender relations have been on the development agenda for four decades and no-one could say that there have not been significant policy initiatives taken to achieve this objective. The enthusiasm generated during the 1975 International Year for Women and throughout the UN international Women’s Decade from 1976-1985 is undeniable and the achievements are clear.
Land Tenure Working Paper 11. This co-publication of FAO and UN-HABITAT seeks to better understand and define the processes, mechanisms and institutions of governance of tenure in rural and urban areas. The paper recognises that excellent land policies, laws and technical reforms have been developed. However, in many cases their implementation has slipped, stalled or even been reversed. By adopting a governance and political economy perspective, the paper offers insights for the design of reforms and for the development of land governance tools.
Given the recent trend of granting vast areas of African land to foreign investors, the urgency of placing real ownership in the hands of the people living and making their livelihood upon lands held according to custom cannot be overstated. This study provides guidance on how best to recognize and protect the land rights of the rural poor. Protecting and enforcing the land rights of rural Africans may be best done by passing laws that elevate existing customary land rights up into nations' formal legal frameworks thereby making customary land rights equal to documented land claims.
This study focuses on the gender dimension of agriculture-related legislation, examining the legal status of women in three key areas. The result is an analysis identifying the main legal and some non-legal factors that affect the existence and exercise of women’s agriculture-related rights.
Through our robust search engine, you can search for any item of the over 64,800 highly curated resources in the Land Library.
If you would like to find an overview of what is possible, feel free to peruse the Search Guide.
