Resource information
The majority of the world live in rural areas and are dependent on land and land based resources. The increasing pressure on land, particularly that used for food production, by countries and private investors poses a huge risks to millions of these rural communities. One of the major causes is weak and poor governance in land tenure systems, as most Governments have so far failed to provide adequate safeguards to protect poor people from eviction or dispossession leaving them without compensation and remedy.
The Voluntary Guidelines on land tenure, endorsed on May 11 by the Committee of World Food Security, are meant to provide effective guidance to Governments to improve their land tenure systems. They will constitute a baseline of acceptable practices that can be used by all stakeholders and Governments to evaluate proposed and existing policies and actions. National grassroots movements need to be supported to campaign for the adoption and implementation of the VGs with the aim of pushing Governments to revise their tenure systems or to introduce appropriate legal framework based on the VGs. In order to raise awareness within local communities, local CSOs, grassroots movements, and NGOs, this brief will introduce the VGs (which is originally a high technical document) , in a less technical and simple way that can be easily understood by local people.
For the full publication see attached pdf document.