News on Land

There are serious concerns that government reforms will further exacerbate land tenure and food insecurity for the majority of the population in Myanmar who rely on their farm fields and forests for their livelihoods.

The Tapajós River Basin lies at the heart of the Amazon, and at the heart of an exploding controversy: whether to build 40+ large dams, a railway, and highways, turning the Basin into a vast industrialized commodities export corridor; or to curb this development impulse and conserve one of the most biologically and culturally rich regions on the planet.

UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz [official website] called [press release] Friday for the US to adopt a consistent approach to indigenous land rights in pipeline projects.

Shortly after a visit from an EU delegation last week, Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards based at Tangul, Kipsitono and Maron KFS camps carried out intensive evictions according to Sengwer witnesses, with KFS allegedly having since burnt down over 90 Sengwer homes and destroyed their property.

The model of urbanization over the past two decades has been far from “smart” and sustainable. This is the major conclusion of Habitat III, the third United Nations’ Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development that took place in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016. Our cities are growing very quickly and spontaneously. Decreased planning and excessive urban expansion, alongside reduced density, is leading us to unprecedented levels of chaos, urban poverty and environmental degradation.

The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development and the Mekong Land Research Forum will run a week-long intensive summer school on land research in the Mekong Region. The purpose of the summer school is to equip early-career academic and advocacy-oriented researchers with key concepts, access to existing research outputs, and knowledge of current land issues across the region in order to strengthen individual and networked research that is geared towards secure access to land amongst the region’s rural and urban poor.

Authorities Threaten, Prosecute Residents Who Speak Out

(Nairobi) – Military and civilian authorities in western Rwanda have arrested, beaten, or threatened people who challenged recent government decisions to force residents off their land, Human Rights Watch said today.

its4land is an EU-financed project to assist Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia in mapping land tenure more quickly, cheaply and transparently. It will end in three years’ time; right now, the Africans and Europeans are in the phase of needs assessment. The focus is not on technical requirements, but on operational priorities and managerial context. The first results indicate that low-cost geospatial technologies will be helpful, not least because they also benefit priorities other than improving cadastral services.

Elizabeth Apolinar enjoys her job as a lawyer in the bustling center of Bogotá these days. But now and then she misses the traditional life she used to lead deep in the heart of the Colombian jungle.

Apolinar is originally from a community called the Sikuani. The Sikuani people are a pueblo indigena, an indigenous people, one of about 100 indigenous ethnic groups in Colombia. These groups are represented by Apolinar’s employer: La Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia (ONIC), or the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia.

On March 20, 2017, a group of individuals from a broad range of institutions and organizations that focus on improving land governance around the world hereby commit to promote and bolster data-sharing efforts within the land sector, with the hope that such action will catalyze positive changes in the area of land governance and lead to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These individuals agreed on the following declaration: