Madagascar: strong concerns around the new land law
At its last meeting on 10 November, the Committee's experts exchanged views on recent legislative developments in Madagascar and expressed their concerns regarding the likely adoption of Law 2021-06. This calls into question the recognition of customary land rights and leads to a reversal of the decentralized land management process that had been under way since 2005.
The government today dissolved the Land Related Problem-Solving Commission that was formed by the KP Sharma Oli government on 22 March 2020.
The commission was formed to provide land to landless people across the country and to manage informal settlers. It had a tenure of three years.
The commission was headed by Devi Prasad Gyawali, who had lost Bharatpur Metropolitan City's mayoral race to CPN-Maoist Centre candidate and CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal's daughter Renu Dahal.
Landless women should be recognized as farmers, and given their due tenurial rights
“Small farmers feed the world” -- does this make any sense to us? If it does, then what is the paradigm shift and what has it done, or is trying to do differently, to uphold and promote this hard truth?
By Tim Hanstad, Co-Founder & Senior Advisor, Landesa
This is the second blog in a series of two that are based on a keynote address made at the 2018 India Land Development Conference.
Land in Tanzania is a scarce resource without which life cannot be sustained (FAO, 2007), and it is “increasingly recognized as an important governance issue” around the global (Palmer et al., 2009, p.1). Hundreds of millions of people including farmers, herders, forest dwellers and agro-industries all rely on land resources for their survival.
The world is increasingly encroaching on indigenous peoples’ traditional lands. Around the globe, indigenous communities are forced to cede ground to state development, corporate land grabs, rising sea levels, environmental degradation, and population growth. The right to land provides the basis for access to food, housing, and development. But for indigenous peoples, traditional lands are more than this; they represent essential ties to their ancestors, their culture, and their languages. Losing their land means losing their way of life.
