United States Agency for International Development | Page 40 | Land Portal

About Us

We envision a world in which land governance systems, both formal and informal, are effective, accessible, and responsive for all. This is possible when land tenure and property rights are recognized as critical development issues and when the United States Government and its development partners demonstrate consistent attention and a firm commitment to supporting coordinated policies and programs that clarify and strengthen the land tenure and property rights of all members of society, enabling broad-based economic growth, gender equality, reduced incidence of conflicts, enhanced food security, improved resilience to climate change, and effective natural resource management.

Mission Statement

The USAID Land Tenure and Resource Management (LTRM) Office will lead the United States Government to realize international efforts—in accordance with the U.S. Government’s Land Governance Policy—to clarify and strengthen the land tenure and property rights of all members of society—individuals, groups and legal entities, including those individuals and groups that are often marginalized, and the LTRM Office will help ensure that land governance systems are effective, accessible, and responsive. We will achieve this by testing innovative models for securing land tenure and property rights and disseminating best practice as it relates to securing land rights and improving resource governance within the USG and our development partners.

United States Agency for International Development Resources

Displaying 196 - 200 of 418
Library Resource
January, 2013
Kenya

Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of more than 200 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) committed to ending child marriage, recently featured an article on how women's land rights can help reduce child marriage. The article describes how USAID’s Kenya Justice project has helped improve girls’ access to education by working with customary justice systems to strengthen women’s land rights in target communities.

Library Resource
January, 2013
Liberia

According to AllAfrica.com, Liberia’s Inquirer newspaper recently honored Philomena Bloh Sayeh as 2012 Director General of the Year. Ms. Sayeh is the Director General of Liberia’s Center for National Documents and Records Agency (CNDRA) and is a key partner in USAID’s Land Policy and Institutional Support (LPIS) project. This award recognizes the ambitious reform efforts that Ms. Sayeh, with the support of USAID, has overseen at CNDRA during the past year.

Library Resource
January, 2013
Ethiopia

IFPRI has just published a new paper that considers whether or not policy changes related to gender equality and women’s empowerment in Ethiopia are, or are not, mutually reinforcing. One set of changes involves certification of land use rights at the community level. See here for a discussion of USAID’s project supporting these efforts. Certification allows husbands and wives to be listed as joint holders of the rights (these rights are inheritable by the remaining spouse when the other spouse dies).

Library Resource
January, 2013

This article focuses on recent policy changes implemented by the Government of Tanzania. The Government has been criticized in local and international media for supporting harmful large-scale land acquisitions. In response, policy makers have placed a cap on transfer size: investors can acquire no more than 10,000 hectares for sugar production and no more than 5,000 hectares for rice production (two key agricultural commodities in the country). But will a cap stop harmful transfers? Maybe, but caps are not necessarily the “major step” that the article suggests.

Library Resource
January, 2013
Colombia, Cuba

According to a recent article from Reuters AlertNet, land is the first issue on the agenda at the historic peace talks in Cuba between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Unequal land distribution is a factor in Colombia’s decades-long internal conflict. If the current peace negotiations are to succeed and Colombia is to achieve enduring peace and stability, land issues must be addressed.

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