gender equity in access to land related Blog post | Land Portal

gender equity in access to land

Synonyms: 
women, marital
gender
Displaying 85 - 96 of 214
4 August 2020
Authors: 
Ms. Karol Boudreaux
Global

Supporting women’s ability to own, manage and control land will help accelerate gender equality globally


It is depressing, discouraging, infuriating – pick your word – to see the scale and scope of abuse and discrimination aimed at women and girls worldwide.


4 August 2020
Authors: 
Omaira Bolanos
Latin America and the Caribbean

Many Latin American countries recognize the property rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant people, but those laws do little to protect women’s access to land


Latin America’s indigenous and Afro-descendant communities are facing not just one pandemic, but three. Women bear the brunt of them all, which threatens communities’ very survival.


Young champions – hope for Mongolia’s herding traditions
27 July 2020
Authors: 
Ms. Suvd Boldbaatar
Mongolia

“It's hard to find the right life partner in my soum (district). Most of the girls went to school, then to university in the city. Not many of them are good at herding.” 

Like most young women who grew up in the city, I usually think of herders as quiet men with closed faces that are wrinkled and burnt by the sun. Khuukhenduu Naranbold is quite the opposite. He is smooth-skinned with an open face and a big smile. Even though he is only 23 years old, he is self-confident and keen to talk.  

Khuukhenduu’s comments about marriage and herding were recorded in 2016 at the beginning of a five-year action research project on women’s land tenure security, called WOLTS. The project has focused on pastoralist communities affected by mining, and has involved repeated visits and evidence gathering in several communities in Mongolia and Tanzania. I have been a part of the WOLTS team since June 2016.

Khuukhenduu comes from Dalanjargalan in the Gobi Desert – an area of Mongolia where the traditional herding lifestyle is under threat, not only from mining but also because many young herder men are struggling to marry. This is because boys, especially in herding families, are expected to look after the family’s animals, while girls are more likely to finish school and go to university. Once the girls leave to study in the city, few want to return to the harsh herding lifestyle.

Although it is difficult to find a partner, Khuukhenduu is not unhappy. He is a keen horseman and very proud of his riding skills. He is a member of the Mongolian Federation of Horse Racing and Trainers, and he loves racing. Unlike most other herders, who have adopted Chinese motorcycles and modern clothes, he still herds his animals on horseback and often wears a beautiful red deel (traditional costume). 

However the nomadic herding life is difficult, and, although he lives in his own ger (traditional felted tent), Khuukhenduu stays close to his parents so that taking care of animals can be shared. At the same time, he uses social media to keep in touch with his school friends – and with girls.

This contrast between tradition and modern technology illustrates the tensions and rapid changes taking place in today’s herding lifestyle. Khuukhenduu has profound knowledge of nature and how to successfully make a living from the land. He also embraces the internet, and was an eager participant in our WOLTS training programme this year on gender, land rights and the law.

In his small community in Dalanjargalan, Khuukhenduu is already well known. Although he does not have high academic qualifications, he is a skilled manager who knows how to maintain pastureland and raise quality livestock. He is also a confident speaker and a natural leader, so it is not surprising that older participants in the WOLTS programme selected him to become a community champion on gender and land. In some ways in his everyday life he is just like a CEO – taking responsibility, always having to think about the future and plan for both the good times and the bad, while constantly carrying out a whole range of highly skilled herding activities.  

Mongolian masculinity is celebrated in July every year in the Naadam festival of the three ‘manly sports’ of horse riding, wrestling and archery. Khuukhenduu is a participant and fierce competitor in Naadam games – especially horse racing. But his skills, grounded in the country’s herding traditions, will be lost unless the country and the government support nomadic families to thrive. 

I often worry that our country does not put sufficient value on the traditional knowledge and skills of herding people. If the herders go, Mongolia will lose centuries of experience in sustainable land and animal management. If Khuukhenduu struggles to marry and raise a family, what hope is there for other young herders? 

The herding life is not for everyone, but I know that city life also has its problems. I also realise that knowledge often comes from life’s experiences, not only from books and university. As Mongolia looks for ways to develop new industries we need to remember our proud nomadic heritage and make sure we protect herders’ land rights, not only to support tourism but – most importantly – as the foundation for so many Mongolian families’ lives. As trained and respected community champions, thoughtful young leaders like Khuukhenduu are the very people who offer us hope for the future.

 

 

Picture credit. Nadiko Lopei Alim a pastoralist from Kapese inTurkana, Northern Kenya. Trócaire is working on resource rights and community engagement to mitigate the risk of conflict related to the extractives industry in Turkana. (Photo by Garry Walsh)
7 July 2020
Authors: 
Barbara van Paassen
Magdalena Anna Kropiwnicka
Global

For those of us who have worked in development since quite some time certain stories have become a little too familiar.  Whether in Latin America, South East Asia or Sub Saharan Africa, it is women and their special connection to land and water that are greatly impacted when the thirsty mining, hydropower or agribusiness industries move into their communities.  The stories tell of loss of access to land and forests, of contamination of the water used for drinking, cooking and bathing; of the much longer and more dangerous journeys to get water and the increased vulnerability to sextortion and gender-based violence.  

Fatuma, an agricultural laborer in Tanzania, is among the millions of women worldwide who work on land but don’t own land of their own.
12 May 2020
Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa

This blog recapitulates the interventions made by the panelists of a recently held GODAN Action webinar on “Empowering Women for Open Data Mapping in Agriculture: Implications for Land Rights and the SDGs in Africa”, Victor Sunday, Dr. Toyin Ojo, Nathalie Sidibe and Uchechi Shirley Anaduaka.  

16 April 2020
Gambia

Governments all over are asking people to stay at home, and The Gambia is no exception. Whilst this is to curb movements to limit the transmission of COVID-19, these steps can have unintended consequences for the poorest & most vulnerable.

How COVID-19 puts women’s housing, land, and property rights at risk
6 May 2020
Authors: 
Ms. Victoria Stanley
Paul Prettitore
Colombia
Indonesia
Global

It’s time we break down the barriers to women’s access to land and protect women’s rights while the pandemic places them in a precarious situation

Not only is the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) having serious health impacts around the world, it also has the potential to significantly affect the housing, land, and property (HLP) of women and girls, particularly in low and middle-income countries. 

Women at a disadvantage

How Anna Letaiko got her land
30 April 2020
Authors: 
Ezekiel Kereri
Tanzania

Anna Letaiko is a middle-aged woman with a soft voice that carries wisdom and strength. Her husband is an older man, and together they live in small mud house in Mundarara – a remote village in Longido district in Tanzania, accessible only by a rough dirt road. It is a Maasai community similar to the one in which I grew up, except that the community’s livelihood is based on mining and pastoralism while my community still depends on farming and pastoralism.

I met Anna through my work with WOLTS – a five-year action research project on women’s land rights in pastoral communities that are affected by mining. As a speaker of the Maasai language, my job is to facilitate and translate in training sessions and help develop training materials.

In Maasai culture, it is very rare for women to own land. Men see themselves as owning land on behalf of the whole family. If women do apply for land, they usually apply in the name of their husband or son. 

However, the law in Tanzania (Land Act, 1999, and Village Land Act, 1999) grants women and men the same rights to land access, ownership and control. The law also says that women have the same rights in decision-making over land. What Maasai customs mean in practice is that women are denied the right to apply for land and own it themselves. 

During our research we heard that, when women in Mundarara applied for land in their own names, their applications were ignored, not taken seriously, and even thrown away. Some women were even asked for sex in exchange for land documents.

Our aim through the WOLTS project is to support the community to find their own solutions to land rights problems. To help them achieve this, we asked them to select community ‘champions’ who would be trained in land rights, mining laws, investment laws, mineral valuation and legal procedures for licence applications, as well as gender-based violence. 

Anna was one of the first champions to be trained in Mundarara. When we first started working in the community, Anna did not even know that she had the right to own land.  After the WOLTS training sessions, she put in an application, and it was taken seriously. 

A few months later, Anna received a small plot near the village centre where she wants to build a modern house. As a trained champion for gender equity, she has promised to help other women by raising awareness and assisting them to become land owners like herself.

The growth of artisanal mining in Mundarara has brought many changes to the community, including giving families new sources of income. Women are finding that they have more opportunities to earn money and participate in community and family decision-making, including through land ownership. 

Documenting and sharing Anna Letaiko’s story reminded me how quickly life is changing in pastoral districts due to factors like mining. I hope it will inspire readers, raise the voices of less fortunate groups, and improve everyday life in communities similar to my own.

 

Sustainable Forests and Reaching the SDGs
22 April 2020
Authors: 
Judith Walcott
Lera Miles
Global

Whether from the emergence of infectious diseases, the growing risks to global food systems, or from the increasing variability in global climate and local weather patterns, it is evident that we urgently need to rebalance our relationship with nature. Our relationship with forests is a prime example.

Forests are among the most biodiverse of Earth’s ecosystems. They sequester carbon and help to mitigate against climate change. They protect watersheds and help to control soil erosion. And yet, around 11% of carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation and forest degradation, which is second only to the energy sector.

The 21st of March was the International Day of Forests, and it convened under the theme of forests and biodiversity. This is fitting in 2020,  the beginning of a critical decade for the planet. There will be landmark moments early in the decade, including the anticipated adoption of a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is a Centre of global excellence in biodiversity. Over the past 10 years, we have been closely involved with REDD+, an initiative under the climate change convention (UNFCCC) that aims to support developing countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to promote the conservation, sustainable management and restoration of forests. Working closely with the UN-REDD Programme, we help countries to plan for and access results-based payments for these actions.

In work led by UNEP-WCMC, the UN-REDD Programme has supported over 20 developing countries to analyze where REDD+ actions could result in multiple benefits beyond carbon. Through spatial analyses carried out in close collaboration with national partners, countries have been empowered to identify areas that have potential for forest conservation, restoration and sustainable management, and can also help secure a range of additional important benefits for people and planet.

These analyses have shown how sustainable forest practices across the planet can contribute to a wide range of the Sustainable Development Goals.

One such example is Costa Rica. The National REDD+ Secretariat, together with FONAFIFO (the country’s National Forestry Financing Fund) and the UN-REDD Programme used spatial analyses to explore where REDD+ actions could help secure benefits beyond carbon, such as enhanced water regulation to support communities vulnerable to water stress, the potential for socio-economic improvements from forest-dependent livelihoods, and from ecotourism.

The work emphasized areas of overlap between the National REDD+ Strategy and spatial priorities for Costa Rica’s other objectives, such as national development, restoration and biodiversity conservation. Considering these benefits when planning and implementing REDD+ will help progress towards SDGs 1 (No Poverty); 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation); 13 (Climate Action); and 15 (Life on Land), among others.

More recently, this work also featured in the development of Costa Rica’s Gender Action Plan (contributing to SDG 5 on Gender Equality). Spatial layers showing the proportion of women by district contributed additional insight and helped to highlight districts where women could act as conservation agents, support efforts to reduce forest fires, and undertake reforestation activities.

Another example is Côte d’Ivoire, where we collaborated with the country’s REDD+ Permanent Executive Secretariat and the Swiss Scientific Research Centre to develop a forest restoration opportunities map. This combined potential benefits, such as carbon density, soil erosion risk and species richness, with obstacles to forest restoration, such as infrastructure development and high human land use. The resulting map shows areas with higher potential and lower obstacles, and thus where forest restoration could be most effective and have the most positive impacts. This could include contributing to SDGs such as SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 13 (Climate Action), and 15 (Life on Land).

This type of analysis can identify where agroforestry actions are feasible to guide implementation of Côte d’Ivoire’s National REDD+ Strategy, promoting the use of agroforestry to strengthen agricultural systems’ resilience to climate change, and to diversify incomes for farmers. There is also an opportunity to align REDD+ and private sector cocoa initiatives, with the potential to create more incentives for smallholder farmers and contribute to SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), among others.

 Meanwhile in Viet Nam, lessons from the National REDD+ Programme are informing the development of a deforestation-free jurisdiction in the Central Highlands. This region is at the forefront of efforts to conserve natural forests and other biodiversity, while sustaining production of high-value crops like coffee. Both nationally and locally, partners are seeking to promote sustainable land management and pilot a deforestation-free approach in the region in support of SDGs 13 (Climate Action) and 15 (Life on Land).

 These individual examples give us just a snapshot of how retaining, restoring and sustainably managing our forests can help achieve a wide variety of SDGs and bring a range of benefits for people and for nature. As this year’s International Day of Forests slogan put it, our forests are too precious to lose.

More information is available here.  

 

31 March 2020
Authors: 
Emmanuel Mbise
Tanzania

As a Swahili speaker from Tanzania, I have not often had the opportunity to meet or work with people from remote Maasai communities. However, I recently visited the villages of Naisinyai and Mundarara in the north of the country as part of a global research project on women’s land rights in pastoral communities affected by mining (the WOLTS project).

Participants of the 2020 India Land and Development Conference
10 March 2020
Authors: 
Mr. Pranab Choudhury
India

About 350 land actors from government, academia, civil society and business came together from more than 15 states and outside India to discuss and debate various land issues. In more than 30 sessions, about 150 speakers and panelists deliberated over 3 days around interdisciplinary land-conversations to generate important information and evidence for policy, practice and academics.

Ten important land messages that emerge from these land conversations are:

Blogs

Events

Discussions

Organizations

Adecru - Acção Académica Para O Desenvolvimento Das Comunidades Rurai

MISSION

Boost the focus of citizen conscience and sovereign agenda for local development promoting greater involvement and interaction between various national and international actors in favor of solidary and fair development of communities.

 

VISION

Rural Communities more actives in setting up priorities, definition, implementation and evaluation of action for their own development

Afghanistan Women Council

Afghanistan Women Council (AWC) is a non-governmental, non-political, non-profit, non-sectarian Charity Organization founded in 1986 by the efforts of Ms. Fatana Ishaq Gailani and a group of Afghan women with an aim to assist Afghan women and children. The predominant objective of the organization is to enlighten women, improve their living conditions and strengthen their socio-economic status in society by their multi-lateral involvement in development activities. AWC is registered with the Government of Pakistan and Afghanistan as a charity NGO.

Afghanistan’s Women’s Network

After the United Nation Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, where a group of women from various organizations and agencies of the United Nation participated; the theory to form a network for the Afghan women's cooperation and integration developed. With inspire from women's movement in different part of the world; finally, in 1995 participants (women) of the conference decided to establish Afghan Women Network (AWN).


Agrisud International logo

Entreprendre contre la pauvreté


 


Nous tous, chez Agrisud, n’acceptons pas l’idée qu’aujourd’hui 1,4 milliards de personnes puissent vivre en situation de pauvreté, avec le plus souvent de grandes difficultés pour se nourrir quotidiennement.


Au Sud comme au Nord, nous savons que cette situation est due très souvent à l’exclusion économique, pour des raisons multiples, qui elle-même entraîne progressivement l’exclusion sociale.


The All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) was founded on April 3, 1949. It is a mass organization that unites Chinese women of all ethnic groups and from all walks of life, and strives for their liberation and development. The mission of ACWF is to represent and uphold women's rights and interests, and to promote equality between women and men.

APWLD developed from dialogues among Asia Pacific women lawyers, social scientists and activists, which began at the 1985 Third World Forum on Women, held in Nairobi, Kenya. The women participating in the dialogues recognised that while law is used as an instrument of state control over resources, rights and even women’s bodies, it can also be used to help effect political and socio-economic changes in our societies.


Asian Rural Women's Coalition (ARWC)

Borne of the women's continued resistance against imperialist globalization was the Asian Rural Women's Regional Consultation held in the Philippines in 2007 (of 52 Asian women from 14 countries) followed by the Asian Rural Women's Conference in 2008 held in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu, India.

Asian Women

Asian Women is the official journal of the Research Institute of Asian
Women. The journal is published in March, June, September, and
December each year.
Asian Womenis supported by Sookmyung Women's University and the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOE).

Association for Women's Rights in Development

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is an international, feminist, membership organization committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women's human rights.

Both Ends

Together with environmental justice and human rights groups from poor and developing countries, Both ENDS works towards a sustainable, fair and inclusive world.

The vision of Both ENDS is a world where long-term environmental sustainability and social equity take priority over short-term profits.

The Cambodian Committee for Women (CAMBOW) is a coalition of 35 NGOs and networks dedicated to the advancement of women and children.

CAMBOW is a non-partisan network of Cambodian NGOs that focus primarily on advancing the cause of women. CAMBOW was formally established in 2000 and registered with the Cambodian Ministry of Interior on 29 March 2001 (No 327). It currently consists of 35 members.

1. Vision


NGO-CEDAW envisions a Cambodian society in which both men and women fully realize and enjoy their human rights.  We strive for: substantive equality for men and women in all fields; no gender-based discrimination; social justice; universal access to justice and education; and fair, sustainable economic development.


2. Goals


Share this page