Case studies and local voices from Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique
This reviews the literature on decentralised land governance in Southern Africa, highlighting key issues and challenges of ‘land governance from below’.
This reviews the literature on decentralised land governance in Southern Africa, highlighting key issues and challenges of ‘land governance from below’.
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.
Most of the world’s poor work in the “informal economy” – outside of recognized and enforceable rules. Thus, even though most have assets of some kind, they have no way to document their possessions because they lack formal access to legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts and permits. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) is the first global anti-poverty initiative focusing on the link between exclusion, poverty and law, looking for practical solutions to the challenges of poverty.
Document de travail sur les régimes fonciers 6. Ce document établit un état des lieux de la gouvernance foncière et des ressources naturelles en Afrique de l’ouest en confrontant les politiques, les législations et les pratiques des Etats avec des principaux standards et critères de bonne gouvernance. L’étude identifie les enjeux auxquels les Etats doivent faire face ; elle reconnaît également les bonnes pratiques et les initiatives entreprises en matière de la gouvernance de la tenure des terres et des ressources naturelles.
The present paper seeks to cover the key issues, trends, constraints, challenges, knowledge gaps and policy options on a range of dimensions of land access. Land access is broadly defined as the processes by which people individually or collectively gain rights and opportunities to occupy and utilise land (primarily for productive purposes but also other economic and social purposes) on a temporary or permanent basis.
Land Tenure Working Paper 13: Secure land rights are crucial if local populations are to engage actively as stakeholders in rural development.
Documento de trabajo sobre tenencia de la tierra 6. Este documento ofrece una evaluación del estado de la gobernanza de la tenencia de la tierra y recursos naturales en África occidental, comparando las políticas, legislaciones y prácticas nacionales con los principales criterios y normas de una buena gobernanza. El estudio identifica los desafíos a los que los Estados deben hacer frente aunque reconoce también las buenas prácticas e iniciativas emprendidas en materia de gobernanza de la tenencia de la tierra y recursos naturales.
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.
The effect of prime-age adult death and its consequences on access to land for the survivors has not been fully explored nor incorporated into policy regardless the fact that high adult mortality is now the lived reality in countries affected by HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa. This paper explores the gendered relationships between adult death due to HIV/AIDS and changes in land rights for the survivors particularly widows. In many African societies, women have traditionally accessed land through marriage.
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