By: Africa News Agency
Date: October 24th 2016
Source: ENCA
RUSTENBURG - Black farmers will march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demonstrate their dissatisfaction over the slow pace of land reform.
African Farmers Association of South Africa (Afasa) secretary general Aggrey Mahanjana said land reform was a ticking time bomb.
By: Sally Hayden
Date: October 24th 2016
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
CALAIS, France (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Deep in the Calais "Jungle" migrant camp in northern France, hundreds of Oromo Ethiopians set up their own school.
By: James Bennett
Date: October 25th 2016
Source: ABC News
It is hot and windy as farmer Parduman Sinh looks out across a salt-encrusted floodplain in India's western state of Gujarat.
The Government has offered Mr Sinh part of the muddy expanse as compensation for his farm to make way for one of India's much touted smart cities.
By: Ian Scoones
Date: October 24th 2016
Source: The Zimbabwean
By Justine Uvuza, senior gender and land tenure specialist at Landesa
Property and citizenship are in many ways what define us, and they interact in fascinating ways.
Participatory and inclusive land readjustment, or PILaR for short, is a way of reorganizing the ownership of land in and around cities in a pro-poor way. It brings together land parcels belonging to different owners and treats them as a single unit for planning and infrastructure provision. The municipality reserves a portion of the land for roads and other public infrastructure, and returns the rest to the original owners. Each owner gets back a smaller parcel, but it is worth more because it now has road access and other services.
The 17th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty took place from 14 to 18 March 2016 in Washington DC. Over 1,400 government officials, practitioners, academics and civil society representatives gathered at World Bank headquarters, as well as some representatives of the private sector. This edition of the bulletin provides an overview of the main themes discussed and key messages identified by the LEGEND Core Land Support Team (CLST).
Lorenzo Cotula discusses highlights from his latest acedemic piece, in which he explores whether investment treaties protect 'land grab' deals, and how these impact the land rights of rural people.
The Yearbook on International Investment Law & Policy discusses developments in international investment law. This is the branch of international law that governs foreign investment flows, including more than 3,000 bilateral and regional investment promotion treaties.
This yearbook chapter discusses the link between international investment law and commercial pressures on the world’s natural resources. It argues that changes in legal frameworks are redefining control over natural resources, and facilitating transitions toward more commercialised land relations. As pressures on resources increase, many national laws undermine the rights of people impacted by investments. If not properly thought through, international treaties to protect foreign investment could compound shortcomings of local and national governance.