Every day since Pres Ramaphosa was elected into office we have searched out South African land-related news which is curated on our website knowledgebase.land. This publication provides a brief summary of land news across a range of categories for March 2020
Land in Uganda is a delicate resource that has caused many conflicts over the past years. About 80% of pending court cases in the country relate to land today. Looking at the country’s violent history, a rising population and increasing impact of climate change on agriculture productivity, land rights in Uganda are contested to this day. Land conflicts are either within communities, family structures or between individuals and external players such as investors.
This paper is one of three thematic case studies resulting from a set of pilot projects undertaken jointly by civil society and private business partners from 2016–2019 in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These pilots sought to test how private companies could collaborate with civil society organisations and other stakeholders to implement responsible agribusiness investments that recognise and respect community land rights, and to develop innovative tools and approaches that could be adopted and implemented at greater scale.
Estudio de caso sobre la organización comunitaria Comunitaria Tolan Juyu’ Taqaj’ y su lucha contra el Proyecto PET-1-2009 de la empresa Transportadora de Energía de Centroamérica (TRECSA). Forma parte de la serie Situación de riesgo y estrategias de autoprotección. Defensorasde la tierra, el territorio y el medio ambiente en América Latina, elaborada por la Iniciativa Mujer Rural y Derechos a la Tierra en el marco del Día Internacional de la Mujer.
En Afrique rurale, la place des tensions autour de la terre et des ressources naturelles dans des conflits armés mettant en danger la sécurité nationale et parfois internationale a attiré l’attention de nombreux observateurs sur les rapports complexes entre foncier et violence politique.
Cameroon is currently witnessing an unprecedented wave of land-based investments, ranging from natural resources exploitation (oil, mining and gas), logging, large infrastructure building, etc. These developments happen in a context of population growth, in an increase in the domestic demand for land. There is a gap between the legislation governing expropriation and compensation in the country, and the variety of customary rules on land and resources. This context of legal pluralism results into endless conflicts opposing communities and the investors, including the State.
This chapter investigated threats of statutory tenure on customary land. The study was primarily qualitative in nature and adopted a case study approach. Using evidence from Chamuka Chiefdom in Chisamba District, Central Province, the paper concludes that there are various threats of statutory tenure on customary land. These include traditional leaders losing control over land, displacements, land disputes, investors acquire more land than what is demarcated to them by traditional leaders, traditional leaders’ not consulting their community members, corruption, and tenure insecurity.
Normative guidelines for addressing project-induced displacement and resettlement have been successful in coercing companies and practitioners to comply with international standards and local requirements. However, good practice has not always been effectively implemented, leading to reduced social wellbeing of people in local communities. We assess how the reciprocal relationships between institutional norms and practitioners’ situated perspectives about company-community interactions can improve social management practice.
The recent spate of violence mostly in north-central and southern Nigeria, typically credited to conflicts between herders and farmers, and the reactions, narratives, and representations that have attended them, calls for an examination of core security questions: who or what is to be secured, from what threat and by what means. In fact, it could be further contextualized as: how is the conflict between farmers and herders constructed, framed, and represented as (in)security within the Nigerian context?
Concerns over food insecurity in developing countries are reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Given that land plays an important role in the livelihoods of most people in developing countries, food security and poverty reduction cannot be achieved unless issues of access to land, security of tenure, and the capacity to use land productively and in a sustainable manner are addressed.
The Support to Responsible Agricultural Investments project (S2RAI) promotes internationally recognised principles and guidelines such as the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT), and Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) to ensure food security and secure land tenure rights for communities in the context of large-scale commercial land investment as well as strengthen the institutional frameworks and coordination structures at federal and regional levels in relations to responsible agricultural investment in Ethiopia.
Entre los grupos de personas defensoras más vulnerables, este documento se centra en dos de los reciben el mayor número de ataques en la actualidad: las y los operadores de justicia y quienes de enden la tierra y el territorio. La expulsión del comisionado Iván Velásquez y del organismo que presidía, la Comisión Internacional contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad de Guatemala (CICIG), supuso un duro golpe al sistema de justicia y es una muestra clara de la regresión que se vive en el país.