News on Land

In a joint initiative between the Land Portal Foundation and the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) called Enhancing Land Portal as an Effective Tool for Strategic Promotion and Campaigning Around SDG Land Monitoring Initiatives, the Land Portal  is looking for a Consultant to review and develop content on land and the SDGs as well as presenting it online in a clear and communicative way.

Dr. Othello Brandy, chairman of the Liberia Land Authority (LLA), on Tuesday told a gathering of civil society organization (CSOs) that the country may likely go revert to serious crises if the Draft Land Rights Act is not passed by the current lawmakers before the end of their tenures.

“If the act is not passed, it means only a few people will continue to have rights over your land, including the right to say what they do and not do with the land, because the tribal title that you hold for your land does not give any legitimate ownership right to you,” Brandy warned.

Unlike the interests of big oil companies, the Wampis revere the sanctity of the forests and mountains in which they live.

On November 29, 2015, the Wampis nation, an Indigenous community of Peru, declared plans to become an autonomous government. Now, Peru's first self-governing Indigenous community has won a major victory toward having their autonomy officially recognized.

KOIDU, Sierra Leone, May 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A dispute over a bridge in eastern Sierra Leone thought to span diamond deposits has divided a local community with a foreign mining company accused of illegally mining the area after volunteering to rebuild the overpass.

The Congo Bridge in Koidu, the capital of Kono District, was deemed by local authorities to be in danger of collapsing after years of illegal small-scale mining around the base.

The Father Ring Parish Hall in Punta Gorda will be the venue for a lecture on the CCJ’s judgement in the Maya Leaders Alliance case that was brought against the Attorney General of Belize. The initiative is a collaboration between the National Garifuna Council and the Impact Justice Project. Sandra Miranda is the President of the National Garifuna Council.

SANDRA MIRANDA

Monrovia - Amid the prolonged delay in the passage of the Land Rights Act into law, the Civil Society Working Group on land rights in collaboration with its partners are doing everything possible to ensure the passage of the act.

The group, in collaboration with the Rights and Rice Foundation on Monday, May 2, held a one-day national consultation dialogue with many organizations on the passage of the draft Land Rights Act.

ADDIS ABABA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Aworar Meka had been living and working at the Reppi rubbish dump in Addis Ababa for only one month when tragedy struck.

A giant landslide at the 50-year-old dump, the Ethiopian capital's only landfill site, hit his neighborhood on March 11, destroying dozens of homes and killing at least 115 people.

As the powers that be in Sipasarubali, Odisha work to take over forest land to build a beach resort, villagers who are trying to fight them are under attack.

Puri, Odisha: On April 28, a friend and I went to Gola and Gopinathpur villages in Odisha to meet activists who, in the early 1990s, had been successful in stalling Tata’s proposed integrated shrimp farm project. As we were leaving, we learnt about an attack on a group of women land rights activists, six of whom had sustained grievous injuries.

A group of indigenous leaders in northeastern Brazil came under a brutal attack late Sunday by ranchers in a violent escalation of territorial disputes. The attack is the latest in a string of sometimes deadly assaults on activists.

Organizational profile

The Land Portal is an independent non-profit based in the Netherlands, delivering a clear strategy to draw together reliable and trustworthy evidence for use in program development, advocacy campaigning and policy formulation for better land governance.

We work to create a better information ecosystem for land governance, working through a core and trusted platform and wide-ranging partnerships. Our work is based on an open development approach.

Rodrigo Tot is a 60-year-old farmer and an indigenous land rights activist from Guatemala. He represents an isolated, small Q’eqchi farming and fishing community of about 270 members in the long-running fight to secure legal ownership over their communal lands.

Tot and his community stood up to the government and nickel miners expanding into their land in Agua Caliente.

And now he's won one of the world's most prestigious activism awards, the Goldman Environmental Prize.

"I would come back to live here if I could," said Altair Guimarães, plucking a guava from a fruit tree that survived the re-development of Rio de Janeiro's once-thriving Vila Autodromo community, all but razed by the 2016 Olympics project.

Guimarães, 61, was evicted from his home two years ago and today the trees, a church and two rows of small white houses are all that remain of the neighbourhood on Rio's western fringe.