تُعرَّف تنمية القدرات بأنها "العملية التي يحصل من خلالها الأفراد والمنظمات والمجتمعات على القدرات و العمل على تقويتها والحفاظ عليها لوضع أهداف التنمية الخاصة بهم وتحقيقها بمرور الوقت" منظمة التعاون الاقتصادي والتنمية (2006).
تعد تنمية القدرات أمرًا مهمًا للغاية في المنطقة العربية لنضمن أن إدارة الأراضي و مواردها تتماشى مع تحديات العصر الحالي،
تعاني المنطقة العربية من العديد من التحديات في قطاع حوكمة الأراضي وإدارتها . والأهم من ذلك ، أن انعدام أمن الحيازة في
المنطقة العربية هو الأعلى بين المناطق الأخرى في العالم ، كذلك في مؤشر البنك الدولي لممارسة الأعمال التجارية ، تحتل المنطقة
المرتبة الأدنى بين المناطق الاخرى ، باستثناء بعض دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي. يؤثر انعدام أمن الحيازة سلبيًا على العديد من
جوانب الاقتصاد بما في ذلك العمران ، والتنمية الزراعية ، والقطاع الخاص ، وتمكين المرأة ، على سبيل المثال لا الحصر. وفوق
Capacity development is defined as ‘‘The process through which individuals, organizations and societies obtain, strengthen and maintain the capabilities to set and achieve their own development objectives over time” OECD (2006). Capacity development is very important in the Arab region to ensure that the management of land and land-based resources matches the challenges of current times. It is also an important aspect for establishing a well-functioning land sector. Despite this, capacity development alone cannot enhance land governance .
The Arab region suffers from many challenges in the land governance and land management sector. Most importantly, tenure insecurity in the Arab region is the highest in the world. In the Worldbank’s Registering Property- Doing Business indicator, the region ranks lower than any other region, with the exception of some Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Tenure insecurity negatively affects many aspects of the economy including urbanization, agricultural development, the private sector and women's empowerment, just to name of a few.
I write this blog as our project team embarks on a fifth year of work on women’s land tenure security (WOLTS) with pastoral communities in mining-affected areas of Mongolia and Tanzania. Just before Christmas 2019, we were in Mundarara village in northern Tanzania. Exceptionally heavy rains made getting around much more challenging than usual. Locals travelling on foot had to make wide detours to avoid getting bogged down in waterlogged grazing land, and it took everyone much longer to get to the village primary school for our long-planned training day.
Over the past year, during my work in western Uganda, I have had the opportunity to get to know Paolyel Onencan. Paolyel is the Executive Director of Buliisa Initiative for Rural Development Organisation (BIRUDO). Paolyel and his BIRUDO colleagues are doing good work around Uganda’s oil and gas development in the Albertine Graben, by helping families get better deals on compensation from the oil companies (Total and China National Offshore Oil Company) working in the region.
The land sector is in the throes of the Global Data Revolution, which, of course, has created opportunities as well as challenges. Government data portals, open access academic journals, community mapping and other citizen-generated data initiatives create possibilities for inclusive and open approaches to data collection and management. But how can these opportunities be leveraged for real change and benefits to citizens?
There is no doubt that we are living in the era of information. Availability of accurate and up to date information, including data, is critical to planning and management, for transparency and accountability. It can help inform learning and scale up good practices, as well as implementing policy, especially when it comes to land. While it is an often-repeated rhetoric that there is a lack of land data, the reality is slightly more nuanced than this.
*This story was written by the following women: Ducicleide Maria da Silva, Gigliola Silva Araújo, Ianka Sayonara da Silva, Josefa Ferreira da Silva, Maria do Carmo da Conceição Carvalho, Maria Karoline Policarpo Silva, Manuella Donato, Mariana de Albuquerque Vilarim and Thalya Carla Vieira de Lima and Patricia Maria Chaves . It was translated by Sonia Jay Wright.*
Networks provide an increasingly popular organizational structure for collective action on land rights in Africa and elsewhere around the world, but sustaining networks’ impact, engagement, and resourcing can be challenging.
Sophorn Poch, Director of the Independent Mediation Organization (IMG), gives us some insights into his involvement with the Second Regional Land Forum as well as his hopes in terms of the Forum's outcomes.
