Focuses on tackling land issues in post-conflict states. Root of problem is that most rural populations are little better than squatters on their own land in the eyes of the law. Remedy is to acknowledge customary land rights as equivalent to private property rights.

A short historical analysis of the origins of current land grabbing, the role of African leaders, and some of the key actors involved.

Includes timeline of events, key findings and recommendations, understanding the legacy of Lancaster House, the impact of land reform, recommendations for recovery – land reform goals, Britain’s role in future land reform programmes.

Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.

Chapters cover access to and distribution of land; land tenure, resource control, and conflicts; non-agricultural production strategies; agrarian labour processes and social relations; social services and reproduction strategies; local ‘grievances’ and social organisation; agrarian structure and class formation; emerging agrarian questions and politics.

A series of short articles on land deals in West Africa: plenty of information, yet reliable data is scarce; abundant land?; complexity of land tenure systems; local perceptions; are win-win partnerships possible?; a call for international guidelines; regional responses.

Includes trends prospects and policies, biofuel production and land access in Tanzania – laws, policies and procedures, impacts of biofuel investments on land access. Findings and implications cover production models and their impacts on local land access; risks of land alienation – long term impacts; limitations of compensation; use of third-party mediators?; large-scale transfers of land for biofuels are most problematic; linking policy with practice; shortcomings of biofuel guidelines; alternative land holding structures and production models.

Covers the Tribal Land Act, tribal land administration, customary law, Land Boards, some long-standing issues, problems encountered. Concludes that there are serious problems concerning the administration of tribal land, mainly due to poor governance and ill-advised changes to the Tribal Land Act and its regulations.

Summary of a book of the same name. Contains the relationship between land and conflict, land in post-conflict contexts, humanitarian engagement on land issues, charting a way forward.

Focuses on the rush by foreign investors to buy up agricultural land across Africa, all too often at the expense of the wellbeing and livelihoods of local communities.

A website link to a series of documents on the global political agreement one year on, land reform ‘success’ and ‘viability’ in Zimbabwe, myths and realities in Zimbabwe’s land reform, adding to the evidence base, policy dialogue – charting the way forward, a panel debate, photographs, interviews with beneficiaries.

Includes setting the scene – securing land rights for the rural poor; land delimitation and registration; the field methodology of participatory land delimitation; practical aspects of delimitation; definition and development.

Includes Sudan – complex and hesitant land policy reforms in a dynamic post conflict environment; Burkina Faso – inclusive decision making and consensus building on land policy; Mozambique – participatory policy and legislative development, difficult implementation and follow through; lessons learned for land policy development – diversity of policy objectives, land policy and peace, securing land rights, the rights of women, state land and land for public purposes, conflict management, conclusions.

Includes the legal and policy situation relating to women’s land rights in Southern Africa; women farmers speak out on which land rights are being enjoyed, or not; potential springboards to the realisation of women’s land rights; baseline trends and key conclusions; recommended action points.

Covers gender and property rights, the impact of AIDS on property rights, laws, policies and programs to promote widows’ and orphans’ property rights. Includes women and children’s knowledge, life skills and participation. Concludes with lessons and recommendations.

Examines the driving factors behind land grabbing in Africa.

For many millions in the developing world, land is central to livelihoods, food security, even identity – the result of a direct dependence on agriculture and natural resources. It is not surprising that a recent wave of large-scale land acquisitions in Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America has sparked a major debate. The briefing provides an analysis of this complex and shifting situation, focusing on Africa. It lays out key trends, drivers and main features of international land deals, and suggests steps to make the renewed momentum in agricultural investment work for local development and livelihoods.

Covers the rush to acquire land in Africa by foreign governments and private investors, fuelled by fears for global food security in the face of climate change and volatile food prices on the international market. Warns that the political and economic risks of these land purchases are colossal and outweigh any gains, and argues that African governments must make food security and sufficiency for their own people paramount.

Examines the ways in which the livelihoods of resettled households have evolved over some 28 years in response to the opportunities created by access to additional, productive land. Looks both at livelihood trajectories and outcomes in the resettlement areas and at selected contrasts between the communities of origin and the new communities. Set in a context characterized by recurring drought, policy shifts, declining public sector support, long-term demographic shifts, and the rising toll of HIV and AIDS. Asks to what extent have the programme’s original welfare objectives-food security and the enhancement of rural livelihoods-been achieved. Draws both upon a wide body of empirical data from the author’s 26-year study of three resettlement areas and a set of largely unpublished materials.

Findings of an investigation into the eviction of pastoralists in Loliondo, Ngorongo District, Arusha, northern Tanzania. Involves conflict with the Ortello Business Corporation of Dubai.

Contains mix-and-match ministries, separating Land Reform from Agriculture, dualism and the ‘missing middle’, rethinking rural development, what are the policy alternatives?

This book is a compilation of 11 papers that explore the limits of the current approach to land redistribution in South Africa and propose policy alternatives. Centres on 3 themes: how land is to be acquired (which land, and for whom), under what tenure arrangements it is to be held, and how production is to be supported. Focus moves beyond debating alternatives to the ‘willing-buyer, willing-seller’ paradigm to the kind of agrarian change that land reform should pursue. Central to all is reconfiguring the roles of state and market.

Covers traditional cultural norms and values, including property and inheritance, religion and witchcraft; and learning from good practice, including advocacy, influencing customary legal culture, support services, awareness raising, children’s knowledge and life skills, conclusions and recommendations. Based on studies in Gaza, Manica, Zambezia and Nampula.

Includes landlord-tenant relations, the Kibaale land question, pastoralists, gazetted land, IDPs and returnees in Northern Uganda, conflicts about refugee resettlement camps, the impact of oil discoveries, deficits in dispute resolution and land administration, corruption, ignorance of the law.

Includes modernisation and agricultural development in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia) past and present; framing viability: frameworks for assessing land and agrarian reform; viability in redistributive land reform in Southern Africa; rethinking viability in Southern African land reform.

Despite the spate of media reports, international land deals and their impacts remain little understood. The report discusses key trends and drivers in land acquisitions, the contractual arrangements underpinning them and the way these are negotiated, and the early impacts on land access for rural people in recipient countries. The focus is on sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Sudan, Mozambique and Tanzania. Concludes with recommendations for stakeholders.

Includes the challenges at different levels; some historical trends which have not helped women; some suggested ways forward; all very worthy, but hard to achieve; conclusions from the literature; fighting on the correct battlefield; pragmatic lessons from a book on Eastern Africa; will women lose even more as a result of the biofuel revolution?; women’s land rights in Rwanda.
Date: 4-7 May 2009 (PLAAS Workshop on Decentralizing Land, Dispossessing Women?)

Includes rising land acquisition in developing countries; threats and opportunities from large-scale land acquisitions; making a virtue of necessity: toward win-win policies; 5 tables of media reports on overseas land investments to secure food supplies, 2006-09.

Includes conceptualising property rights in natural resources; importance of property rights in natural resource management; policy and administrative approaches for devolving property rights; strengthening local governance to manage and enforce property rights to natural resources.

USAID Training on Best Practices for Land Tenure and Natural Resource Governance in Africa

Contains the forest peoples of Africa: land rights in context; land rights under international law: historical and contemporary issues.

Summarises highlights from the first two and a half years of the programme, including insights on the legal levers that can be used to maximise local voice and benefit from local land rights to investor-state contracts through to community-investor partnerships, as well as a few milestones in IIED’s work on legal literacy training, exchange of experience and policy advocacy.

Examines the policies and practices on land of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). While DFID’s approach to land reform in the 1980s reflected the dictates of modernisation, formal registration and market-led distribution of land of the IFIs, this was followed 1997-2002 by a period where changes were made to move in the direction of a rights-based approach. After these 5 years, DFID’s central capacity on land policy was reduced substantially, which allowed the return of the market-based thinking, though now framed in the language of economic growth and good governance. Looks at DFID’s programmatic support for work on land issues. Has a data analysis of the overall funding, changes in funding levels, focus countries and different emphases of DFID ́s in-country work. Concludes with specific recommendations for activists and researchers.

Contains summaries of presentations by Birgit Englert and Elizabeth Daley, co-editors of a new book, Women’s Land Rights and Privatization in Eastern Africa, and by Sibongile Ndashe on South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act, and of the subsequent discussion, comments and questions, and a short video presentation by ActionAid.

Includes gender equality – a liberation struggle or a colonial imposition?; gender equality vs. traditional culture; women’s land rights in traditional culture; what are the practical solutions?; can the paradigm help improve women’s land rights?

Includes a long history of land-related injustice; land and conflict in the colonial period: Mau Mau and land; land policies at independence; migration and settlement within Kenya; recent political violence and contested claims to land; conclusion.

An exciting new collection inspired by a 2003 Oxfam/FAO workshop in Pretoria. Foreword briefly looks at the struggle for women’s land rights across the globe and the lack of concrete gains. Women have been confronted by resistance and patriarchy. Many land reform programmes over the past 60 years were falsely premised on notions of a unitary household. Women were disadvantaged by the codification of customary law in colonial Africa and are now by privatization in a context exacerbated by the coming of HIV and AIDS, which is breaking down notions of reciprocity. To confront these difficult, sensitive issues requires mobilisation and collective action, awareness raising of rights, addressing gender seriously in all land reform initiatives, political and legal will, and the kind of detailed, local level research so ably represented in this fine, new and well-edited collection from Eastern Africa.

Foreword to Birgit Englert & Elizabeth Daley eds, Women’s Land Rights and Privatization in Eastern Africa (Oxford: James Currey, November 2008)

Reviews key gender issues that need addressing re IDP return and the resumption of livelihoods in the recovery of post-conflict Northern Uganda. Reveals the inadequacies in policy and law in addressing gender and land issues. Re-establishing an enduring property rights regime in land requires addressing: (a) securing the essential ingredients of security and certainty of property rights; (b) identifying potential conflicts and addressing them at their latent stage; and (c) establishing a robust and dynamic institutional arrangement that handles land and biodiversity related transactions in a transparent and accountable manner.

Includes presentations on land tenure and violent conflict in Kenya and in Africa; Mt. Elgon; question and answer; addressing violent conflicts over land through negotiation.

Contains an overview and thematic notes on gendered access to land and property; legal reforms and women’s property rights; land dispute resolution; gender-responsive titling; case studies from Nepal and Honduras; further reading.

Study in the Oromiya and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples regions of Ethiopia assesses the impacts of land registration and certification since 2004, including joint certification for husbands and wives. Includes gender implications of land certification and empowerment of women, position of polygamous wives, perceptions of benefits of the reform, recommendations.

On the basis of work in Masvingo Province since 2000, and as part of an ongoing regional project on Livelihoods after Land Reform in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers challenges to 5 oft-repeated myths, that: Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure; the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political ‘cronies’; there is no investment in the new resettlements; agriculture is in complete ruins; the rural economy has collapsed. Concludes that that there is urgent need for economic and political stability but that there is much to build on and positive dynamics to catalyse.

To better understand the role of tenure security in protecting against, and mitigating the effects of, HIV and violence, this book explores these linkages in Amajuba, South Africa and Iganga, Uganda. Results from the qualitative study revealed that property ownership, while not easily linked to women’s ability to prevent HIV infection, can nonetheless mitigate the impact of AIDS, and enhance a woman’s ability to leave a violent situation.

Divided into 4 parts: land tenure issues today: historically unprecedented challenges; an analytical framework for land tenure; what land policies to meet the challenges of diversity and durability?; proposals for the French development aid position on land issues.

Includes the legacies of colonial and apartheid rule; policy dilemmas; key controversies – private ownership or customary land rights?; the nature and content of ‘customary’ land rights; transforming gender inequalities; land rights, authority and accountability; processural or rule-bound versions of ‘customary’ law; was the appropriate procedure followed in enacting the Communal Land Rights Act?

Argues that the seizure of farmland for commercial diamond mining in Angola’s Lunda provinces is causing widespread hunger and deepening poverty. Fields are destroyed where crops are cultivated and arbitrary measurements taken to determine how much to pay the peasants; only US$0.25 per square metre of land seized. The law which ought to provide some protection is routinely ignored. Calls on the companies involved to start negotiations with farming communities to ensure fair compensation for people who lose access to their land through the granting of diamond mining concessions.

Includes formal and customary land systems for property rights; legal and customary rights for women; formalization and documentation of land rights; women’s involvement in land transactions; governance and institutions; access to information about women’s land rights; recommendations.

Addresses the tenure fate of three commons: the 30 million hectares of pasture lands of Afghanistan which represent 45 percent of the total land area and are key to livelihood and water catchment in that exceedingly dry country; the 5.7 million hectares of timber-rich tropical forests in Liberia, 59 percent of the total land area; and the 125 million hectares of savannah in Sudan, half the area of that largest state of Africa. All three resources have a long history as customary properties of local communities and also share a 20th century history as the property of the state.

Includes land issues in South Africa, Participatory Action Research, PAR in action, toolkit of activities. Addresses obstacles to land reform in the Breede River Valley, Western Cape, and how to strengthen local capacities and create awareness of rights.

Investigates the complex relationships between the decentralisation reform and implementation of the 1999 land laws in the rural areas of Tanzania. Considers the political implications of the neo-liberal citizenship model the reform tries to promote at the local level, with a particular focus on its link with the implementation of the Village Land Act of 1999. Concludes that these policies will have far-reaching effects on resource access and democracy at the local level.

Explores current and potential impacts of the increasing spread of biofuels on access to land in producer countries, particularly for poorer rural people. Finds that biofuels could revitalise rural agriculture and livelihoods, but may also marginalise and exclude poorer people – particularly where local land rights are insecure, capacity to enforce them is limited, and major power asymmetries shape relations between local resource users and large industry players. Documents current knowledge on current and potential impacts of commercial biofuel production for access to land in Africa, Latin America and Asia, charting both negative experiences and promising approaches.