Women's Land Rights

Land disputes in Kenya stem back from the pre-colonial period. This period was marked with definite systems of dispute resolution peculiar to each Kenyan community. Land, in a majority of the cases was communally owned and control of land left almost entirely in the hands of the community elders.  Due to the patriarchal nature of the society, however, women’s land ownership rights, in most communities,
were unheard of. Women were only allowed use and access to their husband’s or father’s lands. The rise of feminism in Africa highlighted the fact that land distribution was skewed along gender lines. Land disputes then evolved from being mostly a preserve of men; women began fighting for their rights to ownership of land. This paper questions whether Traditional Disputes Resolution Mechanisms, which are preferred to the formal legal system by most Kenyans, especially in the rural areas are well developed to disregard patriarchal rules and facilitate women's access to justice.

Converting Old Possessions into Lease System in Ethiopia: Decades of Unsuccessful Endeavors
                          Taye Minale Belachew & Habtarnu Sitotaw Sernahagne
Abstract
Dual urban land tenure arrangements have continued to exist in urban centers of the Ethiopia since the beginning of 1990's. However, despite the fact that the lease system began to be implemented for more than a decade ago, we are still witnessing the existence of urban land lease holdings and old possessions side by side. The attempt to have a unified tenure arrangement began with the current government following the enactment of the first urban land lease proclamation in 1993. However, this attempt has turned out to be unsuccessful so far, due to various reasons. Similarly, an unsuccessful effort was witnessed during the implementation period of the 2002 subsequent urban land lease  proclamation.
However, like its preceding urban land lease laws, even if the law aims to achieve otherwise, no feasible change has been observed in unifying the urban land tenure system after the coming into force of the existing Urban Lands Lease law in 2011. Using a doctrinal approach, this article aims to examine why the government is unable to start the process of implementing the law in unifying the urban land tenure system. More specifically, the major possible challenges the government may encounter in converting old possessions into lease holdings and the corresponding benefits that can be accrued to the lease holders, as well as the government, will also be addressed. Moreover, in order to substantiate the argument forwarded in this article, interviews were also conducted with relevant experts in the field from the two concerned authorities of Amhara region. Based on the primary data and analysis of various legal documents, the authors argue that if there is a need to have a unified tenure arrangement in urban areas of the country through converting old possession into lease holdings and if there is a need to rectify previous failures, especially after the enactment of an  unambiguous and unequivocal regulation by the Council of Ministers, then a different approaches and strategies must be adopted.
Key Words: Old Possession, Lease System, Urban Land, Conversion

In Zimbabwe, land is a highly emotive and political issue, one that has been seriously abused. Zanu PF has politicised and racialised the land issue with its “Land is the Economy and the Economy is Land” slogan. Bryan Sims of Idasa’s States in Transition Observatory argues that by forfeiting sensible land policies that would benefit all Zimbabweans, black and white, Zanu PF has damaged the economy, threatened food production, undermined sustainable livelihoods, and compromised civil and political rights.

While there has been some empirical research on the gendered outcomes of the legislative framework governing land in Rwanda, the breadth of these studies has been limited. This study seeks, through rigorous field research, to inform the further development of policies in Rwanda that can create a gender equitable society, and ensure women and men have adequate control over the land they need to be secure, to flourish and to reach their full human potential.

Rwanda has provided a picture of promising change for improving gender equalities in land rights. After the genocide, many households were headed by women and orphaned children, and the urgent need to protect their rights to remain on and manage the land of their husbands or fathers prompted the development of the Law no. 22/99 of 12/11/1999, the Law of Matrimonial Regimes, Liberalities and Successions, commonly referred to as the 1999 Succession Law. 

Knowledge of this law and others is widespread, due to the substantial investments by the Rwandan Government, civil society organizations and international partners in awareness raising. Importantly, these land-related legal interventions and their implementation have also been transforming not only the knowledge, but also the actions and beliefs of both men and women. 

The 1999 Succession Law, among others in Rwanda’s progressive legal framework, has had a broad impact. Because of the law and because of extensive sensitization on gender equality, more and more women are receiving inheritance and are more often receiving it in equal shares. Daughters are increasingly laying claim to umunani, which was almost unheard of before the genocide. Formally married women living under community of property marital regimes are now joint owners of property and have greater decision-making power over it, which according to participants has decreased distress sales and mismanagement of household land resources.

There are many positive changes brought by this legal reform, good governance, and the land tenure regularization process. However, women in Rwanda still experience some challenges in accessing land to farm, and in controlling the land that they do have access to. These challenges include:

The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges facing displaced and returnee women living in western Côte d’Ivoire in exercising their HLP rights. The information is from interaction with communities in which NRC works in western Côte d’Ivoire. It is important to note that since most of NRC´s work is in rural areas, the focus is predominantly on access to land. The communities include those described in Ivoirian parlance as autochtones (original residents), allochtones (people who have migrated from other regions of the country) and allogènes (immigrants from other countries; foreigners). The term ‘migrant’ is here used to refer to both allochtones and allogènes.

Hormuzd Rassam (1826-1910) and Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) recovered the Birth Stories of Sargon copied or composed under Sargon II (722-705 Bce). Existing studies of their intriguing parallels with the Birth Stories of Moses (Exod 1:22-2:10) emphasize shared motifs-unwanted pregnancy, secret birth. abandoned newborn , adoption by an outsider, river ordeal and protection by a divine patron. Here I am proposing that the Birth Stories of Moses parallel the Birth Stories of Sargon to compare the way Sargon and the woman Enheduanna distribute land use rights in Akkad with the way Moses and the women in Deuteronomy distribute land rights in ancient Israel.

The Daftar Jayshī (Military Register) is a fourteen-volume Ottoman land register that records waqf landed properties and private lands authorized by the government in the middle of the sixteenth century. It provides us not only with records from the time when the register was compiled, but also with Mamluk-period records copied from the Mamluk registers, which gives the source some uncommon features. The present study highlights women's landholding in the Circassian period based on this source. Unlike studies based on waqf documents, it will analyze collective landholding data rather than detailed individual cases. Hence it is expected to reveal certain patterns and tendencies in women's landholding and the financial ties within their families. Various women who appear in the Daftar Jayshī, such as wives, mothers and daughters of sultans, mamluks and civilians, participated in landholding. Two patterns can be discerned in their financial activities: (1) acquisition of land that had originally been iqṭāʿ, and (2) acquisition of land that had originally been military rizaq (rizaq jayshiyya, military pension). After acquisition, either by purchase from the state treasury or from holders of private land and waqf, they usually turned them into waqf. Although such patterns and processes were similar with men's cases, the second pattern, acquisition of military rizaq, was more common among women. This indicates it was easy for women to obtain land from which they had benefited, whereas they needed their relatives' support and familial strategy to obtain land that had originally been iqṭāʿ. However, in all cases, the statistical results show that the women who were able to obtain landed property were only a small proportion of the wealthy and social elite.

This dissertation exposes the legal and other obstacles which prevent rural women, Zimbabwe's traditional environmental stewards, from fully realizing their human right (HR) both to sustain their families from forest produce and help to preserve the country's forests. The researcher's deft use of several gender-focused methodologies and complementary data collection methods combine to present clear evidence of the urgent issues at stake. The study's overall guiding methodology of the Grounded/Women's Law Approach maintains its focus on the affected women, whose experiences are revealed as 'lived realities' within a rich multilayered private and public context, the legal implications of which help to highlight their problems and suggest possible solutions. The latter are finally presented as valuable legislative and other reforms and recommendations which are laudably motivated by the desire to ensure that Zimbabwe complies with its local, regional and international HR obligations.

In this paper, the context within which the National Land Policy ascribes to tackle gender issues and especially provide for entrenchment, opportunity, and strengthening of women’s land rights is analyzed. In the first part acknowledgment of influencing context conditions that refine gender issues are detailed these include; the nature of women’s rights, position of women given their transient rights, the consequences of gender inequality on land, and the effect of dispute resolution on land matters. The economic efficiency and equity theory together with the human rights discourse have provided a firm foundation for negotiating and demanding for women’s rights in national policy, which has either had to make choice between options or promote concurrent ideologies to accommodate evidence-based demands to tackle two key issues; access to land and control of land (including its outputs) through adaptation of tenure and legal dualism, making a choice between representation, participant or professionalism in land management and purchase or inheritance under customary or registered tenure. This paper concludes by outlining the key implications of gender
for PSIA data collection and ex-post analysis, as well as implications for systematic
demarcation projects.

Purpose-This study examines how returns on Nigerian REIT (N-REIT) behave in relation to inflation changes from 2008 to 2019 to provide information for investment decisions. Design/Methodology/Approach-Eleven years monthly return data from 2008 to 2019 were collected from databases and annual reports of the three active REITs in Nigeria. Inflation rates covering the study period were collected from the Central Bank of Nigeria's database. The authors adopt the Fama and Schwert model, an extension of the Fisher hypothesis, to test N-REIT's inflation-hedging capability. Findings-The empirical results suggest that N-REIT has perverse hedging-characteristics (poor inflation hedges) across all inflation exposures (actual, expected, and unexpected). The Engle-Granger causality tests conducted corroborates these results. Practical Implication-This study reveals the peculiar nature of Nigerian REITs in relation to inflation, which could have profound investment implication for domestic and foreign investors. Originality/Value-This study is one of the first to empirically analyse the inflation-hedging characteristics of REITs in the second-largest African REIT market (N-REIT).

Women’s lands rights are universal human rights and important to global food security and sustainable
development. Ghana has ratified international treaties to protect women’s lands rights and has made laws and policies to deal
with these issues. In parallel with this institutional effort, Ghana’s customary land laws have governed land rights issues.
Customary lands are held in trust by traditional authorities, who supposedly guarantee women to have equal rights to land as
mendo. However, in reality men appear to have more farmland and favored positions in gaining land ownership. Women
generally appear to depend on their husbands for land access and may lose farmland in the event of husband’s death. This
paper seeks to find if these perceptions are true. In doing so, it seeks to better understand how women’s rights to farmland
are affected by social status, tenure, and accessibility in the Dormaa Traditional area, one of Ghana’s regions with strong
traditional land tenure customs. Based on the fieldwork and the survey among 311 farmers in the area, this paper identified
Dormaa people’s perceptions about customary land use and ownership practices. We found that most respondents perceived
land tenure and accessibility not biased. However, women felt that they needed men for securing customary ownership to
land. After discussing these in details, this paper offers some recommendations on how women’s access to land can be
improved in the future.

This paper describes and analyses the tensions, ambivalence and hybridity that prevail in the nexus between discourses of gender and the legal pluralism of the new, formalised and customary ways of handling land titles. Based on empirical research in Cambodia, it reveals a number of mechanisms, challenges and inconsistencies in the practice of land-titling. Foremost, the practice of titling seems to be highly informed by local discourses of marriage, family, gender and age, which all affect who is assigned the land; this leaves a hybrid construction in the nexus between statutory law and customary practices. The paper departs from this observation and adds three contributions – on a theoretical level – to existing research: by incorporating the dimensions of discourse analysis and legal hybridity, by linking the concept of legal pluralism to the process of hybridisation and by introducing the notion of hybridity of implementation as a supplement to hybridity of law.

A new working paper by #HLRN highlights the dismal living conditions and the gendered, long-term impacts of forced evictions on Gadia Lohar families in Mansarovar Park, Delhi. The historically marginalized and the former nomadic Gadia Lohar community across the city continues to live under the threat of eviction.

The paper can be accessed at:
https://bit.ly/3FwgJ5C

This study takes into account global debates surrounding women's role in development and how access to resources impacts the structures that perpetuate gender inequalities. For example, scholars have argued that women's ownership of and control over resources are linked to gender-based violence. This paper provides a theoretical framework for, and an examination of, the role of land ownership in women's empowerment and receipt of domestic violence that has been posed in the literature but never empirically tested. Household surveys conducted in rural Nicaragua reveal that land ownership is directly related to women's status and power within the marital relationship and to their empowerment and psychological well-being, each of which explained why and how owning land contributed to lower levels of domestic violence. The findings have important implications for the discussion of gender-based violence in the context of development involving land resources, as well as for initiatives that can improve women's well-being and lead to more equitable policies for women.

Rwanda has provided a picture of promising change for improving gender equalities in land rights. After the genocide, many households were headed by women and orphaned children, and the urgent need to protect their rights to remain on and manage the land of their husbands or fathers prompted the development of the Law of Matrimonial Regimes, Liberalities and Successions.

Knowledge of this law and others is widespread, due to the substantial investments by the Rwandan Government, civil society organizations and international partners in awareness raising. Importantly, these land-related legal interventions and their implementation have also been transforming not only the knowledge, but also the actions and beliefs of both men and women.

The 1999 Succession Law, among others in Rwanda’s progressive legal framework, has had a broad impact. Because of the law and because of extensive sensitization on gender equality, more and more women are receiving inheritance and are more often receiving it in equal shares.

Daughters are increasingly laying claim to umunani, which was almost unheard of before the genocide. Formally married women can now be joint owners of property and have greater decision-making power over it, which according to participants has decreased distress sales and mismanagement of household land resources.