"Participatory law-making” is the process by which citizens actively contribute to policy advocacy and law-drafting. Citizen participation in law-making can improve the quality and legitimacy of policies and laws by ensuring that they reflect and protect the authentic interests of the national citizenry. In the field of land rights, participatory law-making can help ensure the recognition and protection of legitimate tenure rights.
Land and labour rights can intersect in multiple ways. Investments in large-scale plantations often entail trade-offs between job creation and compressions of land rights. Also, labour relations can involve tenure dimensions, for example where estate managers sublet plots for workers to complement wages with food production for their family or local markets.
For many decades communities in West and Central Africa have been facing industrial oil palm plantations encroaching onto their community land. With the false promise of bringing ‘developmentand jobs;corporations;backed up by the support of the governments;have been granted millions of hectares of land under concessions for industrial oil palm plantations. The results of this expansion have been disastrous for communities living in and around these industrial plantations and in particular for women.
For the past few decades;efforts to strengthen women’s land rights in many sub-Saharan African countries have primarily focused on a single approach: systematic registration through individual/joint certification or titling. While registration – individually or with a spouse – may support tenure security in specific contexts;the sheer complexity of land governance practices and tenure arrangements across the continent (both formal and customary) often render an emphasis on systematic titling inadequate.
This report;based on primary and secondary data;highlights the link between land and inequality in Uganda. It underscores the need to review policies;laws and regulations governing institutions and practices in the realm of land ownership;access;use and management;and to allocate enough resources to secure land rights. The report looks at factors that have had an impact on poverty and vulnerability;and how policies;laws;regulations and cultural practices can be made more inclusive.
For the past few decades, efforts to strengthen women’s land rights in many sub-Saharan African countries have primarily focused on a single approach: systematic registration through individual/joint certification or titling. While registration — individually or with a spouse — may support tenure security in specific contexts, the sheer complexity of land governance practices and tenure arrangements across the continent (both formal and customary) often render an emphasis on systematic titling inadequate.
Assesses the ongoing land registration process in the Amhara Region and its outcomes for women. The paper finds that while land policy and registration procedures aim to guarantee women’s access to land, practice on the ground suggests more needs to be done to support women’s rights in the implementation process.Land registration, initiated in 2003, stipulates that both spouses should be named on the certificate.
Main chapters cover access to land and poverty reduction, land redistribution, and securing land rights. The last includes the role of land markets, women’s land rights, securing local resource rights in foreign investment projects, protecting the rights of indigenous peoples and pastoralists, conflicts.
Emphasises the need for donors, NGOs and governments to take a more comprehensive approach to women’s land rights that addresses underlying gender dynamics to bring about transformative gender change rather than token gains for women. To be effective, work to secure women’s rights to land must focus on tackling social relations to transform gender dynamics and needs to start at household level.
Provides a backdrop of relevant policies and practice; a gender analysis of the policy framework governing land and investments; and recommendations on how to work towards land rights securing and better inclusion in land governance processes for women in Tanzania. Concludes that implementation of laws, including key gender equality principles, has been weak, and gender inequality in land access persists largely due to the continued dominance of (patrilineal) customary land laws and practice.
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