News on Land

If minority groups have representatives, it helps them to table issues affecting their communities, make decisions in budgeting and distribution of resources.

KAMPALA - Indigenous Peoples (IPs) commonly known as ‘minority tribes’ in Uganda, remain marginalised despite of the various government policies to transform people’s livelihood.

The commissioner culture and family affairs at the gender ministry, Juliana Akonyo Naumo, said many of the IPs remain less educated and are poor compared to other people.

MAGDALENA AKINYI* HAD a feeling something was amiss when, in 2012, total strangers started coming over to survey her land in Kakamega. The 46-year-old mother of four eventually found out that her husband, who was working in Nairobi, had married a second wife and sold the 4 hectares of land that he and Akinyi had purchased together during their 12 years of marriage.

“I confirmed he had sold the land, and I decided to sue them both – my husband and the buyer – for violation of the law, as my husband had not consulted me before selling the land,” Akinyi says.

PALAKKAD: The alienation of land and the government machinery’s failure to provide alternate land to the adivasis of Attappadi even under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) has only led to further marginalisation of these sections. The ghastly incident in which Madhu was fatally assaulted by a group of persons goes to show how vulnerable the 33,000-odd Adivasis of 192 ‘oorus’(tribal hamlet) of Attappadi are in the hands of the mainstream population.

On an alarming note, forest degradation continues even though the global rate of deforestation have halved over the last two decades—from a net annual forest area loss of 7.3 million hectares in 2000 to 3.3 million hectares in 2015.

Morris Kidir gestures at a wide expanse of dark-green land he says was earmarked for a school or clinic in his northern Liberian village, now covered in young oil palm trees.

In October last year, he recalls, workers from Malaysian conglomerate Sime Darby arrived at the plot and began filling in the only gap left in a forest of palms that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Colombia - Recognition of collective land tenure rights in Colombia is among the strongest in Latin America: there has been constitutional backing since 1991, and more than 30 million hectares of forests have already been designated as indigenous land. However, this legal protection often falls short of securing rights on the ground.

The Kuchi nomads traditionally migrate in winter from eastern and central Afghanistan to graze their herds inside Pakistan

PHNOM PENH, Feb 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Donors have refused to support 200,000 nomadic herders in Afghanistan who are running out of food and stranded with their dying animals after Pakistan closed the border, blocking access to pastureland, an aid group said on Monday.

The Yogyakarta Indonesian Ombudsman (ORI Yogyakarta) says a 1975 Yogyakarta deputy gubernatorial instruction cannot be used as a legal basis for the State Land Agency (BPN) to reject the registration of land ownership status transfers requested by Chinese-Indonesians. 

“This is in line with a Supreme Court ruling issued in 2015 that declared the instruction invalid,” said Budhi Masthuri of ORI Yogyakarta on Monday.  

Monday marks the anniversary of the clash in the Muthanga forest in 2003 that is considered the worst police action against the community in the state.

On Monday, Adivasis in Kerala observed the 15th anniversary of what is considered the worst police action against the community in the state’s history. On February 19, 2003, the police evicted hundreds of Adivasis who had occupied the Muthanga forest in Wayanad district to protest the delay in the government’s distribution of cultivable land that it had promised to all landless Adivasis in the state.

Gujarat, one of the fastest urbanising states in India, seems to be doing so against the wishes of its people

As you move west from the crowded old neighbourhoods of inner-city Ahmedabad, the roads broaden, buildings rise taller and BMWs line the streets. Old-timers here remember watching these wealthy, modern neighbourhoods engulf the countryside – the lush fields of wheat and corn that are now gone.

Those who live in villages on the city’s fringes today fear that the same will happen to them.

Lakshadweep and Meghalaya are the best among all 35 states and union territories of India at providing land rights to women, while Punjab and West Bengal are the worst, according to an index created by the Bhubaneswar-based Center for Land Governance, an arm of consultancy firm NR Management Consultants (NRMC).

ORANG Asli from six kampung have formed several blockades in Gua Musang, Kelantan, this morning to protest against the logging activities in the forest reserve which encroach into their land.

Mohd Syafiq Dendi, chairman of the customary land territory in Pos Simpor, said the protesters have set up three blockades at Chawas, Tohoi and Kuala Wok early today.

“The blockades started this morning. This is against logging and commercial farming. 

“They are encroaching into Orang Asli territory. Stop the logging now,” he told The Malaysian Insight.