News on Land

There are at least 362,450 landless indigenous people in the state and at least 40 lakh without land pattas

The Bhumi Adhikar Sangram Samiti, Assam, and the Guwahati Mati Pattakaran Sangram Samiti on Monday unanimously criticised the Assam government’s decision to adopt a new land policy which will allegedly “empower” the corporate sector rather than the indigenous people of Assam.

GENEVA - The U.N. human rights office is lambasting the Colombian government for failing to stop massacres of indigenous peoples by criminal gangs.
 
The latest atrocity occurred Tuesday in Tacueyo in Northern Cauca in southwest Colombia. Criminal groups trying to enter indigenous ancestral lands shot and killed five indigenous people and severely wounded six others.  Among the victims is a prominent human rights defender, Cristina Bautista.

When members of the White Earth band of Ojibwe in Minnesota take out their canoes to harvest wild rice, they're gathering a source of nourishment and following a tradition that has connected them to the land for generations.

But to the White Earth people, manoomin isn't just a resource to be used—it's an independent entity with the right "to exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve."

• When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
• Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.

University, religious, sports and other gatherings often begin with an Indigenous Land acknowledgement. For instance, this article was written in Montréal, or Tiohtiá:ke, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations.

To more effectively guard forests and stem climate change, "simply designating a place as protected can't be the beginning and the end of a conservation effort"

LONDON - Expanding the planet's protected natural areas to safeguard vanishing forests and other ecosystems, and the species they protect, is unlikely to be effective on its own as human encroachment into reserves grows, scientists warned Tuesday.

South Africa embarked on a land reform process in 1994 to address the country’s tragic history of inequitable land distribution along racial lines. One of the aims of the process is to provide redress for people dispossessed of their rights in land as a result of racially discriminatory laws or practices. At the centre of this project is the establishment of the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, an independent body tasked with receiving and investigating the land claims instituted in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 (the Act).

Karina García is the latest candidate to be killed ahead of local elections. Residents say the peace that a 2016 deal was supposed to bring has not arrived

When she launched her campaign to be the town’s first female mayor, Karina García was already household name in Suárez, a conflict-ridden municipality in western Colombia.

Restrictions on land leasing in India have made it more difficult for marginal farmers to access land and finances, pushing them into informal leases that heighten their insecurity

Farming is a way of life in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, where three-quarters of the state’s 200 million people live in rural areas.

Last Tuesday, a group of about 100 women from rural counties converged on the Christian Leadership Centre, otherwise known as Ufungamano House, in Nairobi for one of those rare moments when they get to “talk to the world” about what they do and, hopefully, be heard.

While their live audience was really nothing to write home about in terms of numbers, that did not deter them; they were just happy to exchange ideas, challenges and experiences.

At the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver in June, Dr. Monica Mhoja made an impassioned case for land ownership rights for women.

"We understand that land is life," Mhoja, the Tanzania Program Director for Landesa, told the crowd gathered. "Land is dignity. Land is destiny. Land is hope. Land is empowerment of women and equality. And land is power. The power to prosper. To thrive."