News on Land

ULAANBAATAR - In a damp, single room in a disused bathhouse in the Sansar area of eastern Ulaanbaatar, 90-year-old Yuule Vandan cares for her disabled son and worries how he will survive without her.

Yuule moved out of a shared flat in an old Soviet barracks over three years ago while it was redeveloped but the project was shelved and she now struggles to pay 100,000 tugrik ($42) rent from a state pension of 250,000 tugrik for their one room.

Maasai from four villages on the outskirts of the Serengeti sued Tanzania for the right to return to their villages which have become part of a park

NAIROBI - Maasai herders near Tanzania's famous Serengeti wildlife park have asked a regional court to stop the government intimidating witnesses supporting their legal bid to return to their ancestral land, a lawyer for the community said on Thursday.

TA BOS, Cambodia  - The Cambodian rosewood had stood for hundreds of years, but its value finally proved too hard to resist and the giant tree came crashing down - inside a protected forest.

It's unclear exactly who was behind the felling - nobody has been charged - but it set off a series of events, which culminated in hundreds of villagers rejecting their community forest in favour of cutting more trees.

As logging and palm oil industries continue to decimate the Amazonian rainforest, the people who live in it are taking tech into their own hands to fight back.

"As African countries seek to achieve inclusive economic growth to combat poverty, unemployment, inequality and informality, among other challenges, it is imperative that their policies recognize and realize the potential of urbanization. Cities, if well planned and managed, can become engines of structural transformation through the expansion of the productive sectors of the economy, including industries and services. " These were the views expressed by the Head of the Data Centre of the Central Africa Office of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Ms.

AgriSA represents 28,000 commercial farmers. It believes the reason land reform has failed is not because of inadequate legislation.

The Constitution should only be changed if it is deemed impossible to implement proper land reform under the current legal framework.

There is, however, no compelling reason why the Constitution must be amended to enable land reform, the country's largest commercial farmers' union will tell the parliamentary committee reviewing South Africa's highest law.

The Karen National Union’s Agriculture Department will give priority to assist the public in obtaining their land ownership rights and solve land issues that rose up in the mixed controlled areas within this year.

The department made the decision during its 12th year-end meeting held at Kalo Yaw Hta under Hpa-an District on May 30.

Local residents from the KNU-controlled areas have been demanding the KNU to do required land measurements in order to obtain land grants.

The course is organized by the Netherlands Academy for Land Governance (LANDac), a network of organizations exchanging knowledge and experience on how land governance may contribute to sustainable and inclusive development.

LOKOLAMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Sometime in March, I found myself trudging forward in a remote swamp in the heart of the Congo rainforest. As I worriedly tried to keep my boots from getting sucked in by the soft, brown mud, I wondered how far we could go on. It was our final day. In the two weeks prior, our team of British and Congolese researchers, together with men from the local village of Lokolama, had cut a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) trail into this dense, swampy forest. It had proved to be painstakingly slow work.

Kenya’s Ogiek people are optimistic of returning to their ancestral forests as the government has pledged to honour a landmark ruling ordering reparations for forced eviction.

Evictions have ceased and the Ogiek are rehabilitating parts of the Rift Valley’s Mau Forest one year after Africa’s highest human rights court told Kenya to compensate the forest-dwellers for violating their land rights, an Ogiek campaigner said.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is inviting indigenous peoples’ organizations and communities, and organizations that work with them, to apply for grants that fund projects and partnerships to promote the self-driven development of indigenous peoples and their unique cultural identity. 

Deadline: 08/06/2018

This new IPAF cycle will focus on indigenous youth.